A research report released today from The Children’s
Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) provides specific recommendations for
optimizing the rear seat of passenger vehicles to better protect its most
common occupants — children and adolescents. By bringing technologies already
protecting front seat passengers to the rear seat and modifying the geometry of
the rear seat to better fit this age group, the US could achieve important
reductions in serious injury and death. Motor vehicle crashes remain the
leading cause of death for children older than 4 years and resulted in 952
fatalities in 2010 for children age 15 and younger.