This study investigates whether the two-point rear seat belts will save lifes in France, provided that all occupants of the central rear seat position wear them (using restraining system adaptations appropriate for young children). The study of past research in this field, accident data, and testing with post mortem subjects and dummies, has shown that the systematic use in the central rear position of a lap belt (even with appropriate restraint adaptations for young children) by all passenger, will result in an increase in the number of occupants killed and seriously injured for accidents on the whole. The number of serious injuries to occupants which can be avoided with this belt, mainly by preventing occupant ejection, will be lower than the number of additional serious injuries which will be observed in frontal impact accidents. This conclusion is based on a given occupant age distribution (accident data from 1980), and could change if there were a change in this distribution. For example, if significantly more young occupants (younger than 7) use this central rear position (35% in the studied sample), the protection they would receive with a restraint device adapted to the two-point lap belt could offset that risk. It might even decrease the number of seriously injured.
Abstract