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Death NapThe dangers of tilting back the front seat—don't do it!

By Emily Bazelon
Posted Friday, Sept. 7, 2007, at 4:24 PM ET
Illustration by Robert Neubecker. Click image to expand.

A couple of weeks ago, I was sleeping in the front passenger seat of our car when it slammed into the vehicle in front of us. We were on the highway coming home from a family trip. The other three people in our car weren't hurt. But I'd reclined my seat, and my seat belt, which was riding high, left a long welt around my rib cage and along my stomach. As it turned out, I had internal bleeding from a lacerated spleen and three cracked ribs. I spent the next two days in intensive care.

I've recovered nicely, thank you. But the more I thought about my accident, the more I wondered whether I'd inadvertently done myself in by tilting my car seat back—as I do on just about every long drive. We worry a lot about car seats and kids (a subject I've written about). There are government guides and centers that show you how to buckle and position them right. Adults, on the other hand, are just told to wear their seat belts. But one of the main functions of kids' car seats (once they've reached the age of about 3) is to make sure that their seat belts hit them at the right height. Tilt your car seat back in the front, and you'll find that the seat belt no longer rides the way it's supposed to—the upper strap moves up toward your neck and the lower one up from your pelvis to your middle. And it turns out that is dangerous—though somehow neither the government nor car manufacturers think they need to clearly tell us so.

Federal transportation safety officials started worrying about the risks of reclining car seats back in 1988. Since then, the medical literature has bolstered the case for concern. Yet somehow, car manufacturers have never been required to put warning labels on car seats like, for example, the ones that detail the dangers of air bags. The carmakers have argued that it is "common sense" that an upright seat is much safer than a reclining one. In other words, everyone knows, or should know. Maybe I'm the only clueless one out there, but I don't think so.

In the 1980s, the National Transportation Safety Board studied 167 crashes in which passengers wore seatbelts and concluded that the belts only work well when they're worn correctly. There are a variety of ways to screw up your seat belt—one of them, the NTSB concluded, is to change its position by reclining your seat, creating "a potentially dangerous combination in a moving vehicle." One of the accidents the NTSB looked at was a head-on collision that killed a 7-year-old who'd been asleep in the front. "The researchers concluded that the child would not have been killed if his seat had been upright," according to this article in the journal Trial.

When NTSB told the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration about its findings, NHTSA opined that "it is likely that most people who ride with the seat back reclined are not aware of the associated risk." According to the Trial article, the automakers were asked to comment and offered the endearing "common sense" retort I've mentioned, along with the argument that it's enough that some owner's manuals warn against "excessive" reclining.

And that was it: The government agencies never took action. Rae Tyson, a spokesman for NHTSA, told me that the warnings in the owner's manuals "appear to be sufficient." He also said that "there are only federal safety standards issued when we believe there is a problem large enough to justify expense of new regulation." And he accused me of "arbitrarily" picking out one aspect of car safety based on "anecdotal evidence."

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Emily Bazelon is a Slate senior editor.
Illustration by Robert Neubecker.
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Remarks from the Fray:

This is not news, did not warrant an article, and does not impose any requirements for warning labels.

I think an exact parallel is windows. Most cars these days are equipped with these devices, which I will explain for the benefit of folks like Emily Bazelon: they are hard clear flat objects which are commonly placed on doors and at the front of the car, allowing light but not wind or small objects to pass through. Glass also creates a "greenhouse effect" in a car when it's sitting in the sun, potentially roasting anyone who can't crack the windows, like a child or a dog. But there is no warning label to this effect on windows! Bazelon should get to work on that scandal.

--hyperionred

(To reply, click here.)

The theory of 3 point restraints (i.e., lap and shoulder belts) is that they give much more protection to your upper body by restraining you from flying forward into the dashboard in a collision. That's why automakers and regulators switched from the original lap belt design to the lap and shoulder belt.

But when you are lying down, you don't want the shoulder belt on you. All you want is the lap belt to hold you into your seat. Then, if you fly forward, you won't hit the dash, and you also won't ride up on the shoulder belt.

So when you recline back, put the lap belt around your waist but then put the shoulder belt UNDER you. The tensioner should still stop the belt from loosening in an accident, if it is working properly.

This isn't as safe as not sleeping in the car at all, but remember, sleeping in the passenger seat is often what makes long drives possible with 2 drivers.

--Dilan Esper

(To reply, click here.)

Of all the odd small facts to know, how are we supposed to know this unless we are told? Not all of us are engineers. Hey, it is safer to be rear facing in a car seat, but most of us turn our kids around at 1 year and 20lbs, when it would be far safer to keep them RF until they outgrow a rear facing car seat. Did you know that is what the American Academy of Pediatrics is recommending?

You can buy car seats that FF at 20lbs, but that isn't the wisest choice, but how is someone to know, unless they are told? Submarining is the same type of situation as internal decapitation. Most people have never heard about it until told. It should be more clear, as it does effect peoples safety.

It would be VERY easy to make it so a seat cannot recline while driving, or beep at you if a seat is reclined while driving, just like it beeps if your seatbelt is off. It should be one of those built in safety features.

Lots of us have reclined in seats while driving, her article just helps us realize that it isn't safe, and that is a good article worth publishing.

--mommyof3

(To reply, click here.)

I've always suspected that it's dangerous to ride with a severely reclined seat (say, a 150-degree angle), as many people do when they're sleeping. I'd agree that in that extreme, the concept is pretty intuitive.

But what if the seat is reclined only a small amount? Does that pose a significant risk? If so, what is the optimal angle? 90 degrees?

If only a small recline poses real risk, then I don't think a call for greater awareness is misplaced at all. The layperson can't really predict the physics of a car crash; if the fit of the belt feels normal, how else would one know?

--modenastradale

(To reply, click here.)

Car seats should not recline. If engineers made the decision, car seats would recline at no more than 10% for safety's sake. It is the sales division that insists that car seats recline because people would refuse to buy a car with a seat that did not go back.

Having said that: you do not need to be reclined to submarine. It can also happen as a result of poor lower-back posture. Your hips should be against the back of the seat for the 3-point harness to work properly (though it's safer to slump with belt than with no belt).

--Argh

(To reply, click here.)

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