A U.S. study shows the middle of a car's back seat may be the least desirable, most uncomfortable and most "un-cool" spot — but it is also the safest. University at Buffalo researchers studied all U.S. automobile crashes involving a fatality between 2000 and 2003 in which someone occupied the rear middle-seat.
They found occupants of the back seat are 59 percent to 86 percent safer than passengers in the front seat and, in the back seat, the person in the middle is 25 percent safer than other back-seat passengers.
After controlling for all other factors — restraint use, vehicle type, vehicle weight, occupant age, weather and light conditions, air-bag deployment, drug results and fatalities per crash — the researchers found the rear middle seat is still 16 percent safer than any other seat in the vehicle.
Results of the study were presented during the May meeting of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine in San Francisco.
