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ChildPassengerSafety.com is FOR SALE
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April 2004
ROLLING OVER ON SAFETY:
THE HIDDEN FAILURES OF BELTS
IN ROLLOVER CRASHES
with C. Tab Turner
Acknowledgements
This report was written by Asa Tapley, Tab C. Turner, Laura MacCleery, Morgan Lynn,
and Matt Pelkey. Ed Ricci, Jr., prepared an excellent foundation for the report with his
research and data collection. Invaluable editorial assistance, direction, and
communications assistance were provided by Joan Claybrook, Booth Gunter, LuAnn
Canipe, Shannon Little and Angela Bradbery. Much appreciated legal review and advice
were provided by Bonnie Robin-Vergeer and Scott Nelson.
About Public Citizen
Public Citizen is a non-profit, 150,000-member organization based in Washington, D.C.
that represents consumer interests through lobbying, litigation, regulatory oversight,
research and public education. Since its founding in 1971, Public Citizen has fought for
consumer rights in the marketplace, safe and secure health care, health and safety
standards, fair trade, clean and safe energy sources, and corporate and government
accountability.
Public Citizen
1600 20th St. N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20009
(202) 588-1000
www.citizen.org
ROLLING OVER ON SAFETY:
THE HIDDEN FAILURES OF BELTS
IN ROLLOVER CRASHES
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
A FAILURE TO PROTECT: Focus on Increased Safety Belt Use Overshadows
The Safe, Accountable, Flexible, and Efficient Transportation Equity Act of 2003 (SAFETEA),Will
Prevent THOUSANDS of Needless Deaths on the Highway
Each Year
April 2004 Rolling Over on Safety 1
ROLLING OVER ON SAFETY:
THE HIDDEN FAILURES OF BELTS IN ROLLOVER CRASHES
INTRODUCTION
A FAILURE TO PROTECT:
FOCUS ON INCREASED SAFETY BELT USE OVERSHADOWS SERIOUS
SAFETY BELT FAILURES IN ROLLOVER CRASHES
“If every SUV driver wore their seat belts we’d save 1,000 lives a year,” said
Eron Shostek, spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. “We
can make the vehicles safer, which we do, but we need the public to meet us
halfway and practice safe driving methods.”1
Whenever the growing carnage from rollover crashes is raised in the media or by
Congress, the auto industry blames drivers and the failure to use safety belts as the source
of highway fatalities.2 But as this report documents, the focus on belt usage, and rising
belt use rates, requires that we ask an important question: How effective are safety belts
in a rollover crash and are belts well designed to protect people in rollover crashes?
While we now can say, without question, that using a safety belt is far safer than
not using one, the push to increase safety belt use has occurred in the absence of any
substantial upgrades in the effectiveness of this technology in rollover crashes. Now that
safety belt use rates are at an historic high, it is past time to ask whether belts are as
effective as they could and should be in rollover crashes.
This report documents serious inadequacies in current belt design and
performance in rollover crashes, where belts are one of the most important safety
counter-measures. While frontal air bags, and increasingly side impact air bags, provide
crucial protection in those types of crashes — compensating at least in part for any belt
inadequacies — in rollover crashes occupants rely primarily upon safety belts to prevent
ejection of heads, arms and other body parts or flailing about the inside of a vehicle. Belt
failure in rollovers, which can involve spooling out of the belt and other failures, risks
great and even fatal harm. It is critical that belts perform effectively in rollover crashes,
yet evidence suggests that safety belts are tragically ineffective in many rollover crashes.
Major resources, totaling some $150 million requested for FY 2005 federal
spending alone, are devoted to increasing belt usage.3 Dr. Jeffrey Runge, Administrator
of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), testified before
Congress on Mar. 18, 2004, that increasing belt use was the “single most effective way to
reduce traffic fatalities and serious injuries.”4 And when sport utility vehicle (SUV)
rollover dangers were highlighted by Congressional hearings in the spring of 2003,
automakers responded that belt use, not vehicle safety, should be the focus.5
April 2004 Rolling Over on Safety 2
Yet the industry and Bush Administration’s statements require a thorough
analysis of belt performance in rollover crashes and issuance of a federal motor vehicle
safety standard. Rollover deaths are now a full one-third of all occupant fatalities, or
over 10,000 each year. When serious injuries are added, the number of people whose
lives are forever altered by rollover crashes rises to an astonishing 26,000 each year.
Federal data show that 22,000 people who were wearing a safety belt died in rollover
crashes in the U.S. between 1992 and 2002.6
Thousands of lives are needlessly lost, and devastating injuries experienced, each
year in rollover crashes despite occupants’ use of safety belts. This report is a call-toarms
for the need for a federal safety standard to dynamically test belts in rollovers, so
that they will be properly designed to protect occupants against unnecessary harm.
For 37 years, since the first federal belt safety standard took effect, no federal test
of belt performance in rollover crashes has been required. And automakers, despite the
growing sales of rollover-prone SUVs and pickup trucks, have done little to address the
three terrible, and inter-related, risks of rollover crashes: roof crush, ejection, and safety
belt performance failure. Some long-overdue attention is now being focused on roof
crush, as federal regulators contemplate a new standard for the first time in over thirty
years, and a recent groundbreaking series in The Detroit News lays out the public case for
a new standard.7 Officials of NHTSA have also indicated that they are interested in
measures to reduce ejection, including side impact head air bag requirements.8 Yet scant
notice has been paid to the need to improve belt performance as a rollover survival
measure.
The three risks of rollover – roof crush, ejection, and belt failure – are interrelated
hazards that make rollover survival unnecessarily difficult. For example, a weak
roof poses its own threat of roof crush that can inflict severe head and neck injury. Roof
crush also opens ejection portals by distorting and enlarging window openings and
weakening doors, so that the safety belt’s failure to hold the occupant in the seat leads to
partial ejection of the occupant’s body, which can produce very grave and fatal injuries.
Because belted occupants are held generally inside the vehicle by the restraint, they are
also particularly susceptible to severe head and neck injury from a collapsing roof.
The cardinal principle of vehicle safety design is preservation of the integrity of
the vehicle occupant’s survival space in a crash. All three of the rollover hazards
compromise or destroy this protective envelope around the occupant, which should
remain intact as a basic safeguard in every kind of crash. A comprehensive solution
which addresses all three aspects of the rollover problem is required, and has been
proposed in legislation now before Congress.
April 2004 Rolling Over on Safety 3
FastCounter by bCentral
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Rear-facing - Unmatched Safety
Rear-facing is the safest position the child can ride in. It is recommended that all children stay rear-facing beyond the minimal requirements of 1 year and 20 lbs, and not be turned forward-facing before they reach the maximum rear-facing limits of a convertible seat - either the maximum rear-facing weight limit or when the top of their head is within one inch of the top of the seat shell. While most parents are aware that they must keep their children rear-facing "until they are AT LEAST 1 year old AND 20 lbs", very few are told that there are significant safety benefits when a child remains rear-facing as long as the seat allows. For most children, rear-facing can and should continue well into the second year of life.
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Expert Statements confirm that rear-facing is safest.
Rear-facing CRs provide the best protection from injury for any child that can fit in one.
- SafetyBeltSafe USA technical encyclopedia, written by Kathleen Weber, retired Director of the Child Passenger Protection Research Program in the University of Michigan Medical School
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...a child should remain rear-facing for as long as possible...even beyond their first birthday, increasing their protection until they are 30 to 35 lbs.
- Dr. Michael Sachs, Pediatrician and Child Passenger Safety Expert
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...for optimal protection, the child should remain rear facing until reaching the maximum weight for the car safety seat, as long as the top of the head is below the top of the seat back
- American Academy of Pediatrics policy statement
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A child should stay rear-facing for as long as possible
- Flaura Koplin Winston, MD, PhD, principal investigator of Partners for Child Passenger Safety, a research collaboration between The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and State Farm Insurance Company.
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Basically, the longer a child can ride rear-facing, the better protected his or her spinal cord is in the event of a collision.”
- Joe Colella, Child Passenger Safety Training Manager for the National SAFE KIDS Campaign
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Why should my child rear-face past 1 year and 20 lbs?
Every milestone in a child's life is exciting! First steps, first word, first day of school. Even car seat milestones seem exciting, but the truth is, they should be looked at with a certain sense of dread, not longing. Every step in car seat "advancement" is actually demoting the protection your child receives.
Many parents have the misconception that children are uncomfortable or at risk for leg injury by having their legs up on the vehicle seat or bent when kept rear-facing. These concepts are completely incorrect. First, children are more flexible than adults so what we perceive as uncomfortable is not so much so for the children. Second, there is not a single documented case of children's legs, hips, etc. breaking in a crash due to longer rear-facing. Even if a leg were broken, it can easily be fixed. A damaged spinal cord (from forward-facing too soon) cannot be repaired and subjects the child to lifelong disability or death.
Any expert will tell you that rear-facing is DEFINITELY safer. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) says that rear-facing seats are 71% safer than nothing and FF seats are 54% safer than nothing. Other experts say that "Crash studies have shown that, in a front-end collision, injury rate is reduced by 30 to 60% if a passenger is rear facing rather than front facing."
Child safety seats: Rear-face until at least one year discusses the reasons why children should remain rear-facing for a FULL year and 20 lbs. In it, Kathleen Weber states, "In the research and accident review that I did a few years ago, the data seemed to break at about 12 months between severe consequences and more moderate consequences..." This does not mean that there are NO consequences. The consequences may no longer be death from a completely severed spinal cord, but simply life-long injury, including complete paralysis. Research studies suggest that until children are at least four, they are incapable of withstanding crash forces as well as adults - and should remain rear-facing.
In a crash, life-threatening or fatal injuries are generally limited to the head and neck, assuming a child is in a harnessed seat.
In a forward-facing seat, there is tremendous stress put on the child's neck, which must hold the large head back. The mass of the head of a small child is about 25% of the body mass whereas the mass of the adult head is only 6%! A small child's neck sustains massive amounts of force in a crash. The body is held back by the straps while the head is thrown forward - stressing, stretching or even breaking the spinal cord. The child's head is at greater risk in a forward-facing seat as well. In a crash, the head is thrown outside the confines of the seat and can make dangerous contact with other occupants, vehicle structures, and even intruding objects, like trees or other vehicles.
Rear-facing seats do a phenomenal job of protecting children because there is little or no force applied to the vulnerable areas. In a rear-facing seat, the head, neck and spine are all kept fully aligned and the child is allowed to "ride down" the crash while the back of the child restraint absorbs the bulk of the crash force. The head is contained within the restraint, and the child is much less likely to come into contact with anything that might cause head injury.
Notice the difference in stress on the child's body in the two crash test photos below.
Courtesy of University of Michigan Child Passenger Protection
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The last two videos can be found along with other rear-facing crash tests here, by clicking on the top bar where it says "Tormaystestit" More videos can be found here. Click on a seat, then in the upper right corner, click on "Frontcrash-video" or "Seitencrash-Video". Not all seats have video. All video shown is of European seats.
In Sweden, it is standard practice to keep their children rear-facing up to the age of 5, or as much as 55 lbs. From 1992 through June 1997, only 9 children properly restrained rear-facing have died in motor vehicle crashes in Sweden, and all of these involved catastrophic crashes with severe intrusion and few other survivors. Larger Swedish child restraints are designed to accommodate these larger children. US-certified restraints can be used rear-facing until the maximum weight limit is reached or until the top of the child's head is within one inch of the top of the seat, whichever comes first.
In the US, the number one cause of death goes from Congenital Anomalies when kids are rear-facing to Motor vehicle Crashes at the minimum turn-around time of 1 year; evidence that rear-facing is SAFEST.
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The Volvo XC90 really shines with its safety innovations. Time and time again we hear from the general media about the propensity of sport utility vehicles to roll-over. Television news magazine shows and Consumer Reports make it seem like they flip at will, like Mexican jumping beans. Reality has shown that it’s driver inexperience that’s at fault: many people erroneously think that driving an SUV excuses them from the laws of physics, as well as state highway laws. In any event, Volvo has addressed this problem with their Roll-over Protection System (ROPS). The system starts with a low center of gravity; just slightly higher than their V70 XC wagon. It then employs active gyroscopic sensors to register the vehicle’s roll speed and roll angle. If the calculated angle indicates that there is the danger of a roll-over, the XC90’s Dynamic Stability and Traction Control anti-skid system kicks in, which reduces the engine’s power and brakes one or more wheels until the vehicle understeers and regains stability.
To further minimize injury to passengers, Volvo then reinforced parts of the roof structure with Boron steel, which is supposed to be about five times stronger than normal steel. All seats, including the third seating row have seat belt pretensioners to help keep the passengers in place. For additional head protection, the XC90 has an inflatable air curtain that extends to all three rows (or just the two rows if the vehicle is only equipped with two seating rows).
The XC90 was also designed to be considerate of other vehicles on the road, particularly lower, smaller passenger cars. The typical SUV has high positioned bumpers, which might cause greater damage to a passenger car and its occupants in the event of a collision (the car may slip below the front of an SUV without activating its own safety features). The XC90’s front suspension subframe is supplemented with a lower cross-member and positioned at the height of the beam in a conventional car. The lower cross-member will make contact with an oncoming car’s protective structure, instead of avoiding it. And, of course, the XC90 has all the other safety features that are commonly included in Volvo’s other models: the Whiplash Protection System, the Side Impact Protection System, and the ISOFIX child-seat attachment system.
What’s more, in the three-row, seven seat configuration, XC90 offers a flexible child-seat with booster cushion in the middle of the second seating row. The child seat can slide forward to be positioned just behind the two front seats. Volvo promotes this feature as “improving contact between the child and front seat occupants.” I think it safely shortens the distance between your hand and your kid’s mouth, which I know is a very politically incorrect thing to say. Either way, it should reduce valuable distraction time should a child need attention from the driver.
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When you see a vehicle with improperly restrained children, look at the driver and ask yourself if they just don't care, or are they just ignorant. In either case, telling them probably won't do you any good, but you may feel better.
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