New regulation to prevent head injuries announced.

Calling it the most significant new safety rule in a decade, Transportation Secretary Federico Peha recently ordered manufacturers of all cars and light trucks to provide better head protection for occupants. "People die and sustain serious injuries in crashes often because their heads strike hard, upper interior parts of their vehicles. This is a leading cause of fatal head injury in crashes," Pena said. "Safety is the Clinton administration's top transportation priority and improved head protection--such as padding to make upper interior vehicle components more friendly--will prevent more than a third of these kinds of deaths each year." The head protection requirement will save up to 1,200 lives, prevent up to 975 serious head injuries, and provide an estimated economic benefit of as much as $900 million annually, according to Ricardo Martinez, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and a board-certified emergency physician. Martinez noted that in recent years about 2,400 occupants of light vehicles have been killed and 60,000 have been injured in crashes annually because their heads strike pillars, side rails, headers, and other upper interior components. The new requirement will be phased in over five years, starting with model year 1999. All vehicles manufactured on or after September 1, 2002, must comply, Martinez said. NHTSA's safety standard for occupant protection in interior impacts, in effect since January 1,1968, for passenger cars and since September 1, 1981, for light trucks and vans, already requires protection against injury from components such as instrument panels, seat backs, and head restraints. The standard has reduced the risk of fatality and serious injury for unrestrained occupants by about 25 percent in contacts against lower interior components, such as instrument panels and seat backs, according to Martinez. "The American public expects us to move forward in preventing death and injury when regulatory solutions clearly are the right course. This requirement is right because the benefits are there, it's technologically feasible, and can be done at a comparatively small cost to all of us," Martinez said.