Field data analyses have shown that the occupant protection in rear seats failed to keep pace with the advances in front seats likely due to their low occupancy and the lack of advanced safety technologies. This study provided a comprehensive literature review on rear seat occupant protection addressing the different needs for a diverse population, ranging from children in harness restraints to adults with a wide range of stature, age, and body shape. Based on the findings from field data analyses, experimental studies, and computational simulations, rear seat safety can be improved by properly using age-appropriate child restraints and introducing
adjustable/advanced/adaptive features into the rear seat restraint systems. However, the lack of biofidelic injury assessment tools for children, older, and/or obese occupants will be one of the major challenges for further improving the rear seat safety. The increased proportion of older and obese populations, the growth of lightweight vehicles, the popularity of smart-phone-based ride service, and the advances in active safety technology and autonomous vehicles will likely increase the significance of rear seat safety but at the same time will pose additional challenges. All these trends suggested that more efforts on optimizing rear seat restraint systems adapting to a wide range of impact conditions, occupant characteristics and sitting postures are necessary in the future.
