Car Accident Victims Receive Improved Protection in Side Impact Accidents

According to a report release today by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, new mid-size cars fared much better, than prior year’s testing, in protecting victims of side-impact car accidents. The tests were done to determine what type of injuries, serious or otherwise, occupants involved in a variety of accidents would suffer.

While testing demonstrated improvements in side-impact crashes, which are mainly attributed to side-impact air bags becoming standard equipment in most vehicles; unfortunately, the same vehicles did not perform as well in preventing injuries, such as rib fractures and internal organ injuries, in rear-end accidents. Rear-end collisions are more likely to occur in stop and go commuter driving, such as most of us face in Miami Dade, Broward and Palm Beach Counties.

The Institute believes better head restraints, and seats which work better with those restraints, would go a long way in protecting occupants. As the Vice President of the Institute said “it is not a major feat of engineering to design seats and head restraints that afford good protection.” We could not agree more.