Consumer watchdogs and industry are agreed on this point: modern cars offer their occupants an unprecedented level of safety - provided they are sitting in the front of the vehicle.
There are airbags from head to toe there in a bid to ensure that driver and passenger come to no harm. Their seatbelts tighten automatically on impact and headrests are designed to stop whiplash and help minimise injury.
By comparison, back seat passengers live dangerously.
The second- and third-row passengers riding in a typical car often enjoy a much lower level of protection, say experts from Germany's ADAC motoring club, the country's largest.
Some cars have little or no provision for such occupants and depending on the car model and price range, potentially life-saving safety features cost extra.
In many cases, the seatbelt geometry is incorrect as well. Those occupying the middle position on the rear seat often have only a simple pelvic belt. On top of that many vehicles lack an adjustment for rear seatbelt height, a belt force limiter and a belt tensioner.
All of these measures are designed to ensure that passengers are restrained gently but firmly in the case of a collision.
According to the ADAC, a frontal collision at 64km/h exerts a kinetic force on rear-seat passengers equivalent to a ton of weight. Needless to say the injuries this can produce are serious.
ADAC engineers complain that the headrests on rear seats are often spaced further away from an occupant's head compared to the front seats. This increases the risk of whiplash - the term given to injuries of the neck caused by or related to a sudden distortion of the neck in a collision.
NO AIRBAGS
The most alarming aspect is that most manufacturers do not even offer front-seat style airbags for rear-seat passengers - even though figures show that they are highly effective in preventing fatalities or serious injury.
No car manufacturer's spec sheet features knee or foot-level airbags for the rear either.
Whether in the front or back “the seatbelt is the number one lifesaver,” said Sven Rademacher, spokesman for the German Road Safety Council (DVR). He points out that 20 per cent of the 3648 car occupants killed on German roads in 2010 were not wearing a seatbelt.
The figures underscore the importance of “belting-up” even for the shortest of car journeys.
In Germany most car passengers seem to have grasped the importance of being restrained during a car trip. According to the Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt), the average compliance stands at 98 percent for front seat occupants and 97 percent for those seated in the rear.
It is ironic that passengers in the back generally seem to feel safer. Rademacher puts this down to the erroneous assumption that the back of the front seats would cushion any impact and offer a high level of protection to those behind when a head-on collision occurs.
TWO-DOOR DANGER
The DVR spokesman also pointed out that no carmaker has installed an audible warning signal to alert rear passengers that they are not wearing belts, although this feature is standard for those travelling up front.
Rademacher has identified another specific risk for rear-seat passengers too. In cars with four doors occupants usually manage to exit the rear of a damaged car. In a two-door vehicle the bodywork has often been so seriously deformed that passengers are effectively trapped in the back.
In the case of hatchbacks passengers can sometimes clamber out of the back door whereas those in the back of a two-door car with a conventional boot have little chance of escaping via the luggage compartment.
“In recent years the safety of drivers and front-seat passengers has been considerably enhanced. This is mainly due to the European car safety performance assessment programme (EuroNCAP),” said Dirk Schultz, chief development officer at component supplier TRW.
The safety bugbears for rear-seat occupants will probably start receiving more attention when the EuroNCAP crash tests turn their attention to the risk of those sitting behind the driver, using their familiar test dummies to assess the effects on real people.
One promising development was announced by TRW in 2012 - a prototype roof-mounted air bag for rear-seat passengers.
Despite the obvious shortcomings, those sitting in the back seats can still enhance their safety by ensuring that there are no loose objects left lying on the rear window shelf, said the ADAC expert.
Heavy items in the boot should always be placed lower down and secured in place. It is also a good idea to adjust headrests so that these are as close as possible to the occupant's head. -Sapa-dpa