American researchers have revealed that a car's middle back seat may be the least desirable, most uncomfortable, most "un-cool" spot in the vehicle, but it happens to be the safest.
The team comprising of University at Buffalo scientists studied all fatal vehicle crashes in the US between 2000 and 2003 where someone occupied the rear middle-seat.
The study revealed that occupants of the back seat are 59 per cent to 86 per cent safer than passengers in the front seat and that, in the back seat, the person in the middle is 25 per cent safer than other back-seat passengers.
"After controlling for factors such as restraint use, vehicle type, vehicle weight, occupant age, weather and light conditions, air-bag deployment, drug results and fatalities per crash, the rear middle seat is still 16 percent safer than any other seat in the vehicle," said Dietrich Jehle, MD, UB associate professor of emergency medicine and lead author on the study.
The researchers claimed that the reason the rear middle seat is the safest is because passengers sitting in this position have a much larger "crush zone" than rear side-seat passengers in near-side impact crashes.
The crush zone is an area of the car designed to collapse in an effort to absorb some of the impact from a collision.
"In addition, in rollover crashes there is potentially less rotational force exerted on the middle seat passenger than on those in the window seats," he said.
"This study reinforces the importance of using seat belts in the back seat, as well as demonstrating that the rear middle seat is the safest. Legislation to require rear-seat belt use by all passengers should be strongly supported," he added.
Results of the study were presented at the May meeting of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine in San Francisco, California.
