Driving in a recently-made automobile and forgetting to put on your seat belt is something you won’t soon forget — largely because you’re inevitably going to hear alarms and see warning lights urging you to buckle up. This has been a standard feature of many a car for years now, provided you’re in the front seat. But sitting in the back seat sans seat belt isn’t going to do much good if you’re in an accident — and that’s one of the reasons the NHTSA recently took steps to make it harder to travel belt-free in the back seat.
In late December 2024, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration finalized a rule that both adds warnings for vehicles’ rear seats and makes the existing warnings for traveling in a front seat without a belt on more noticeable. The agency estimates that these measures will save up to 50 lives each year. The revised front seat warnings are scheduled to go into effect on September 1, 2026; their rear seat counterparts will go into effect one year later.
“These new requirements will help to increase seat belt use, especially for rear seat passengers, by enhancing reminders for vehicle occupants to buckle up,” said the agency’s chief counsel, Adam Raviv, in a statement.
One major consumer safety group quickly voiced its support for the new regulations. “Seat belts are your first line of defense in a crash for all passengers, yet we know that passengers in the back seat are less likely to use seat belts than in the front seat,” said Emily A. Thomas, Consumer Reports‘ associate director of auto safety.
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The fine follows an incident where a pedestrian was hit and dragged for 20 feetThe NHTSA’s data backs up that assertion. According to the agency’s data for 2022, 91.6% of front-seat occupants used their seat belts, compared to 81.7% of passengers in the back seat. Could this help keep more people safe on the nation’s roads? We’ll know later this decade.
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