What you’ll learn:
- Despite the effectiveness of seat belts and seat-belt warnings, most new vehicles continue to lack a rear seat-belt warning.
- The NHTSA announced a mandate for car manufacturers that will hopefully make seat-belt usage more widespread for those riding in the back.
- The NHTSA estimates this new rule will prevent more than 500 injuries and save about 50 lives every year, once fully implemented.
Today, we know definitively that seat belts save lives: About 50% of the passenger vehicle occupants killed in 2022 were not buckled up, according to data from National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) Fatality Analysis Reporting System. We also know that seat-belt usage rates for rear-seat passengers have consistently been below those for the front seats.
Specifically, according to data from NHTSA’s annual study of observed seat-belt use, in every year from 2013 through 2022, its usage was lower in the rear seats than front seats, ranging from a difference of about 9 percentage points in 2013 (78% vs. 87%) to about 14 percentage points in 2017 (75% vs. 89%). In 2022, seat-belt use in the front was about 91.6% and in the rear it was about 81.7%.
Despite the effectiveness of seat belts and seat-belt warnings, most new vehicles continue to lack a rear seat-belt warning. What’s more, while most vehicles provide some level of reminder for the front seats, this level of enhanced protection hasn’t occurred for all vehicles and isn’t standardized.
Recently, the NHTSA announced a mandate for car manufacturers that will hopefully make seat-belt use more widespread for those riding in the back. Manufacturers must comply with the amendments as of September 1, 2026, for the front seat-belt warning system requirements and September 1, 2027, for the rear seats. The NHTSA estimates this new rule will prevent more than 500 injuries and save about 50 lives every year, once fully implemented.
The rule requires that all new vehicles provide a visual alert if a rear seat is occupied but the seat belt isn’t in use. Once the vehicle starts moving, there must be a visual and audio alert—a feature that most cars already have in place for front-seat passengers.
The rule amends Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 208, “Occupant crash protection,” which previously required a seat-belt warning only for the driver’s seat. The new requirements apply to passenger cars, trucks, buses (except school buses), and multipurpose passenger vehicles with a gross vehicle weight rating up to 10,000 pounds.
Bending the Curve in a Better Direction
While annual roadway deaths remain at more than 40,000 lives lost, new early estimates of traffic fatalities for January through September of 2023 project that traffic fatalities declined for the sixth straight quarter. NHTSA projects that fatalities decreased about 4.5% from the same time in 2022.
Seat belts are effective in most types of crashes and greatly reduce the risk of fatal and non-fatal injuries compared to the risk faced by unrestrained occupants. Seat-belt warning systems encourage seat-belt use by reminding unbuckled occupants to fasten their belts and/or informing the driver that a passenger is unbelted so that the driver can request the unbelted occupant to buckle up.
The warnings provided by seat-belt warning systems typically consist of visual and/or audible signals. Research by NHTSA and others shows that seat-belt warning systems are effective at getting unbuckled occupants to fasten their seat belts. Although the regulations don’t require seat-belt warnings for any seating position other than the driver’s seat, almost all model year 2022 vehicles have voluntarily provided seat-belt warnings for the front outboard passenger seat.
The new rule has two main components: The first requires a seat belt warning for the rear seats, and the second amends and enhances the seat-belt warning requirements for front outboard seats.
Under current requirements, the visual component of the warning generally must be at least 60 seconds long, and the audible component must be at least four seconds long. Most vehicles already provide a seat-belt warning for both front outboard seats that’s much longer than the minimal required warning for the driver’s seat belt, with the vast majority of vehicles including an alert that’s at least 90 seconds.
Seat-Belt Warning Requirements
The rule includes several changes and enhancements to the seat-belt warning requirements for the front outboard seats:
- A seat-belt warning for the front outboard passenger seat (which is already the case for most vehicles). Currently, only the driver’s seat is required to have a seat-belt warning.
- A longer-duration audio-visual warning than is currently required for the driver’s seat belt.
- A visual warning and a two-phase audible warning that’s based, in part, on vehicle speed. A visual warning is required whenever the ignition switch is in the “on” or “start” position (or the propulsion system is activated), the seat is occupied, and the seat belt isn’t in use. The warning must be visible to the driver.
- A two-phase audible warning. The first phase warning must activate when the ignition/propulsion system is activated, the seat is occupied, and the belt isn’t in use. The first phase warning must last for at least 30 seconds, unless the seat belt that triggered the warning is fastened or the second phase audible warning is activated within that time. The second phase audible warning must activate, and remain active, whenever the seat is occupied, the seat belt isn’t in use, and the vehicle speed is at least 10 km/h (6.2 mph). The audible warning may be temporarily paused to allow for another audible safety warning alerting the driver to take immediate action.
The NHTSA has finalized a number of other safety initiatives aimed at reducing traffic deaths, such as a requirement for passenger cars and light trucks to come equipped with automatic-emergency-braking (AEB) systems, including pedestrian AEB, by 2029. NHTSA also has proposed adding ADAS Tech to its Feature Rating System.
Among commercial entities, UPS has committed to installing AEB technology on all new class 7 and 8 large trucks, while Amazon has committed to invest $200 million in new safety technologies for its vehicle fleet. Other technology-focused commitments toward safer vehicles include deployments of vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications for vehicle, pedestrian, and bicyclist safety.