Seated in harm's way: the rear-center lap belt is only half a restraint system. It secures only the lower torso while the upper torso, which contains the most critical organs, is left unprotected.

Every year millions of consumers, buoyed by a false sense of security, buckle themselves or their children into rear-center-seat lap belts. These passengers can suffer disabling, even fatal, injuries if the vehicles in which they are riding are involved in collisions.

A lap belt, also known as a two-point restraint, consists of a strap that crosses from one hip, across the front of the pelvis, to the other hip. The belt does not cross the chest or shoulder. It is intended to secure the lower torso during a collision and prevent ejection. Although lap belts (assuming they are designed properly) secure the hips and lower torso, they allow the upper torso, neck, and head to swing freely during a collision.

As a vehicle decelerates in a frontal collision, the upper torso jerks forward violently. The body jackknifes over the belt and accelerates toward the direction of impact, straining muscles, ligaments, tendons, bones, and the spinal cord. If the force of the collision is too great for the body to sustain, the spine will be pulled apart. The passenger may suffer serious brain damage or neck injury if the head and neck strike the front seats, center console, or other passengers. The injuries are often debilitating or fatal. The evil of a lap belt is that the most severe injuries can occur even when it is designed "properly." An improperly designed lap belt tends to slide off the pelvis during a collision, allowing the hips to rotate forward under it. That motion is called "submarining," and the serious abdominal injury it can cause to internal organs is referred to as "seat-belt syndrome."

Why is this archaic restraint system installed in so many vehicles? Money. By not installing lap/shoulder belts in rear-center seats, automakers save about $24 a vehicle. (1) Money saved is money "earned" to automotive manufacturers.

Children are at greatest risk for abdominal and spinal injuries. One reason is that their hips and pelvises are not as developed as adults' are, so lap belts are more likely to slide off the pelvis. Their muscles, ligaments, and tendons are weaker than adults', which means their spines stretch more easily, increasing the likelihood of spinal injuries. Also, children's heads account for a greater percentage of their overall body weight than adults' do, so children's heads accelerate and impact with greater force.

What compounds this problem and makes it entirely unacceptable is that the occupants who are least likely to survive a collision in a lap belt--children--are the passengers who most often occupy the rear-center seat. Children want to look out the front window or talk with their parents in the front seats, and parents are told to place children in the rear seat, away from air bags. All these factors add up to children using rear-center lap belts more often than adults and suffering serious, sometimes fatal injuries.

Government inaction

The federal government does not require manufacturers to install rear-center lap/ shoulder belts. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) 208 and 209 let auto-makers meet the regulatory requirements by providing a standard lap belt--the vehicle restraint technology used since the 1950s--despite extensive medical and technical literature starting in the late 1950s and early 1960s that warns against the use of lap belts alone as a restraint system. (2)

The government has been so slow to improve rear-seat occupant protection that it did not even require rear lap/shoulder belts for the outboard positions--those flanking the rear-center seat--until 1989. (3) Before then, only lap belts were required for all rear seats.

Originally, the government moved toward protecting consumers. In May 1970, the predecessor to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)--the National Highway Safety Bureau (NHSB)--proposed a regulation requiring automakers to install either passive-protective or lap/shoulder belts in all seats in every passenger car manufactured after January 1, 1972. (4) The rule never became final.

Lee Iacocca, then-president of Ford Motor Co., told then-President Nixon in a private meeting with industry leaders that "safety is killing us." (5) Various physician groups, public-safety organizations, and individual consumers petitioned NHTSA from the 1970s through the mid-1980s to require lap/shoulder belts in rear seats. The agency rejected the petitions, estimating that the restraints would increase total vehicle prices by $10 to $20. (6)

It wasn't until August 1986 that a report--by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which has no regulatory authority--recommended that all vehicles have lap/shoulder belts in the rear-outboard seats and that NHTSA and the manufacturers examine the feasibility of installing them in the rear-center seats. (7) In several congressional hearings, NHTSA was criticized for failing to act in the 15 years since the problem was first brought to its attention. Publicity and public pressure eventually moved the agency to make changes. (8) In June 1987, it adopted new regulations requiring rear lap/shoulder belts in the back seat, but not for the rear-center position.

The NTSB did not let the issue fade from NHTSA's radar screen. In March 1994, NHTSA told the safety board that the $24 cost per vehicle for installing rear-center lap/shoulder belts outweighed any benefit. The NTSB conducted a second study and in 1996 reissued recommendations to both NHTSA and the manufacturers, stressing the need for complete restraint systems in the rear-center position. (9) NHTSA has taken no additional regulatory action, even though it issued a report in 1999 concluding that lap/shoulder belts are over 33 percent more effective than lap belts alone in preventing fatalities in the rear seat. (10)

Corporate excuses

Ford, General Motors, and Daimler-Chrysler have all given consistent reasons for why they have not and cannot install rear-center lap/shoulder belts, but litigation has proven the fallacy of their arguments. Hundreds of lawsuits involving children who were killed or paralyzed by rear-center lap belts have been filed and confidentially settled.

The automakers have claimed that it is not feasible to install rear-center lap/shoulder belts in vehicles without package shelves behind the back seats--SUVs, minivans, hatchbacks, and station wagons--because there would be no place to anchor the shoulder harness. But there are at least two solutions. In 1988, an English engineer and safety researcher for Volvo published a guide for installing lap/shoulder belts in non-sedan vehicles. (11) The fix was to incorporate the upper anchor into the seat itself--called a seat-integrated belt system--which required that the seat be strengthened considerably to bear the additional load.

Another potential solution has been marketed by Autoliv, a worldwide restraint-system contractor. It designed a "seat belt beam" that extends across the width of the vehicle behind the rear seats. (12) The few vehicles without package shelves that currently have rear-center lap/shoulder belts use a combination of these approaches.

The second excuse is as hollow as it sounds. No other automakers have installed rear-center lap/shoulder belts, the automakers argue, so they should not have to. Their reasoning is, "If the other manufacturers' restraint systems are just as `inadequate' as ours, we can't all be wrong, can we?" Unfortunately for litigants, all automakers have used this "conspiracy of inaction" excuse successfully at trial, regarding any number of defects.

The Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association (MVMA) and the domestic manufacturers seem to have formed a "conspiracy" to delay the installation of full rear-center restraint systems. Each year, the domestic automakers have released a limited number of vehicles with full restraint systems in the center position. They know the system is superior and have the technology to incorporate it into all models, but have chosen not to do so to cut costs.

The key to rebutting this argument is to look at how U.S. automakers produce vehicles abroad. Ford of Australia, for instance, introduced three sedans with rear-center lap/shoulder belts--the Falcon, Fairlane, and Ford LTD--in 1993. (13) It even touted the addition as a "safety upgrade." Ford of Europe marketed a "transit" van that could accommodate up to 15 passengers, with lap/shoulder belts at all seating positions, as early as 1994. Two years later, Ford finally introduced a sedan in the United States that had a rear-center lap/shoulder belt--the 1996 Taurus.

GM is guilty of the same conduct. Its Australian division, Holden, manufactured the 1994 Commodore sedan with a lap/ shoulder belt in the rear-center seat.

Another common defense is auto manufacturers' claim of a lack of statistical evidence to support the idea that rear-center lap/shoulder belts increase safety. To convince fact finders of this argument, the defense introduces evidence from two sources: 1970s data on the first installation of lap/shoulder belts in front seats and industry-supported expert research. (14) Plaintiff lawyers can counter this with recent literature, including a 1999 NHTSA paper (15) and the automakers' own internal documents.

Domestic manufacturers have acknowledged the superiority of lap/shoulder belts over lap belts.

In June 1986, then-GM chair Roger Smith stated in a press release, "Recent GM studies have now confirmed that lap/shoulder belts offer the rear-seat occupant the best protection." (16) In 1992, Chrysler (now DaimlerChrysler) advertisements in national publications stated, "It used to be lap belts. They did the most good for the most people. But now more and more people are discovering three-point lap/shoulder harnesses are a better idea.... Chrysler believes rear-seat passengers should have the best safety protection available." The ads include photographs of children restrained in lap/shoulder belts in the rear seats of Chrysler products.

Safety-research engineers at Ford concluded in a 1967 internal memo that "when properly worn, the [three]-point, diagonal shoulder belt system has been demonstrated to offer much greater protection to the vehicle occupant than does a single lap belt alone, since it prevents injury from jackknifing." (17)

Many other internal documents demonstrate in the clearest terms manufacturers' knowledge of the danger of lap belts and the risk they pose to children. Some documents include data from sled tests, in which test dummies were torn in half when they jackknifed over lap belts. Other documents discuss the cost of installing rear-center lap/shoulder belts.

Lap belts are outmoded restraints that expose passengers to needlessly high risk of serious injury or death. The auto industry, which has known of the dangers associated with rear-center lap belts and how to remedy the problem for decades, has been slow to act. It is time for the federal government to require lap/shoulder belts in all seating positions.

Notes

(1.) Letter from Nat'l Highway Traffic Safety Admin., to Nat'l Highway Safety Bureau (Mar. 18, 1994) (available in Nat'l Transp. Safety Bd. Recommendation Rep. No. H-86-049).

(2.) 49 C.F.R. pt. 571.208, 571.209 (2002).

(3.) Fed. Motor Vehicle Safety Standards: Occupant Crash Protection, 54 Fed. Reg. 25,275 (June 14,1989).

(4.) 35 Fed. Reg. 7187 (May 7, 1970).

(5.) Frontline: Rollover: The Hidden History of the SUV (PBS television broadcast, Feb. 21, 2002) (transcript available at www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/ frontline/shows/rollover/nixon/nixon.html).

(6.) Fed. Motor Vehicle Safety Standards: Occupant Crash Protection, 49 Fed. Reg. 15,241-01 (Apr. 18, 1984).

(7.) NAT'L TRANSP. SAFETY BD., NTSB NO. SS-86103, NTIS NO. PB86-917006, SAFETY STUDY, PERFORMANCE OF LAP BELTS IN 26 FRONTAL CRASHES (1986), available at www.ntsb.gov/publictn/1986/SS8603.htm.

(8.) NTSB Safety Recommendations H-86-38 to H-86-40.

(9.) NAT'L TRANSP. SAFETY BD., PUB. NO. 55-96-01, SAFETY STUDY, PERFORMANCE AND USE OF CHILD RESTRAINT SYSTEMS, SEAT BELTS, AND AIR BAGS FOR CHILDREN IN PASSENGER VEHICLES (1996); NTSB Safety Recommendations H-96-28 and H-96-33.

(10.) CHRISTINA MORGAN, DEP'T OF TRANSP., PAPER NO. HS 808-945, EFFECTIVENESS OF LAP/SHOULDER BELTS IN THE BACK OUTBOARD SEATING POSITIONS (1999).

(11.) M.M. SADEGHI & H. MELLANDER, ALTERNATIVE PASSENGER CAR SEAT--SEAT BELT DESIGN FOR CRASH SAFETY (Soc'y of Auto. Eng'rs Paper No. 880900, 1988).

(12.) AUTOLIV, INC., SEAT BELT SYSTEMS (2002), available at www.autoliv.com/appl_alv/Autoliv. nsf/pages/seat_belts_beam (last visited Nov. 13, 2002).

(13.) Press Release, Ford Motor Co. of Australia, News from Ford--More Safety for Falcon (Feb. 17, 1993) (on file with authors).

(14.) JEYA PADMANABAN ET AL., SAFETY PERFORMANCE OF REAR SEAT OCCUPANT RESTRAINT SYSTEMS (Soc'y of Auto. Eng'rs Paper No. 922524,1992); CHARLES WARNER ET AL., USAGE & EFFECTIVENESS OF REAR-SEAT BELT RESTRAINTS IN SEVERE CRASHES (Road & Safety Vehicle Conf., Paper No. 97SAF063, 1997).

(15.) MORGAN, supra note 10.

(16.) Press Release, General Motors (June 6, 1986) (on file with authors).

(17.) Letter from R.G. Snyder, Ford Motor Co., to John Versace, Ford Motor Co. (Sept. 19, 1967) (on file with authors).

Bradley Dean Kuhlman is a partner with Langdon, Emison, Kuhlman & Evans in Lexington, Missouri.