Study: Unbelted rear seat passengers can kill drivers in a crash

Seatbelts dont just conserve the lives of those wearing all of them.

Testing by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has discovered that a driver who has an unbelted passenger sitting behind him or her can be twice as likely to die in an incident, even with their own seatbelt on.

The frontal crash test was conducted with 35 mph, and video displays the rear passenger slamming into the back from the drivers seat with enough drive to crush the driver into the controls as the airbag deflates.

The organization said the results are especially concerning given the results of a friend survey that discovered passengers are usually less likely to buckle up within the back seat of a hire car, like a taxi or Uber or Lyft, than they are in a privately-operated automobile.

Approximately half of the surveys respondents stated they always use their seatbelts within the back seat of a hailed automobile, while approximately three-quarters of them fag personal cars. This compares to 91 percent seatbelt use reported simply by front-seat passengers, and in part demonstrates an outdated assumption that the back seat is safer than the front side, regardless of seatbelt use.