NHTSA finalizes Seat Belt Reminder Rule to increase Seat Belt Use

DTS offers testing solutions designed specifically for airbag & pretensioner testing

Final rule is estimated to save about 50 lives annually by adding a seat belt warning requirement for rear seats and enhancing warnings for driver and front passenger seats

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration finalized a rule requiring seat belt use warnings for rear seats and enhanced warnings for driver and front passenger seats, a significant action aimed at increasing seat belt use and preventing injury and death in a crash. NHTSA estimates this new rule will prevent more than 500 injuries and save about 50 lives every year, once fully implemented.

The final 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 with the exception of school buses, and multipurpose passenger vehicles with a gross vehicle weight rating up to 10,000 pounds.

Manufacturers must meet the enhanced front seat belt warning system requirements on new vehicles starting Sept. 1, 2026. The rear seat belt warning system will be required on new vehicles as of Sept. 1, 2027. Manufacturers are welcome to comply with the rule before these deadlines.

“Wearing a seat belt is one of the easiest and most effective ways to prevent injury and death in a vehicle crash,” NHTSA Chief Counsel Adam Raviv said. “While seat belt use has improved for decades, there’s still more we can do to make sure everyone buckles up. These new requirements will help to increase seat belt use, especially for rear seat passengers, by enhancing reminders for vehicle occupants to buckle up.”

Seat belt warning systems, also called reminder systems, use visual and audible alerts to encourage seat belt use. Usage rates for rear seat passengers have consistently been below those for the front seats, with front seat belt use at about 91.6% and rear seat belt use at about 81.7% in 2022. Approximately half of all passenger vehicle occupants who died in crashes in 2022 were unbelted, according to data from NHTSA’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System.

NHTSA has finalized a significant number of safety initiatives aimed at reducing traffic deaths, such as a new requirement for passenger cars and light trucks to come equipped with automatic emergency braking systems, including pedestrian AEB, by 2029. The agency also finalized significant updates to its 5-Star Safety Ratings program, known as the New Car Assessment Program, that include new advanced driver assistance technologies, a crashworthiness pedestrian protection program, and a roadmap for future program changes over the next 10 years. These initiatives support the Department’s National Roadway Safety Strategy, launched in January 2022, which provides a roadmap to achieving the only acceptable number of deaths on our roads: zero.

More Information: nhtsa.gov/press

Author/Source: NHTSA

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Euro NCAP reveals Best in Class for the SAFEST vehicles

Did You Know? DTS data acquisition systems and sensors are used to support a variety of testing for New Car Assessment Programs (NCAP) around the world. Leading the way in crashworthy test solutions are DTS’s SLICE PRO onboard data acqusition syststem and SLICE6 in-dummy DAS which collect the critical injury data that helps determine vehicle safety ratings in a variety of categories.

In 2024, five cars from China, Germany, and Japan set the standard for vehicle safety. Best in Class winners included the Škoda Superb and Volkswagen Passat (winning jointly), the MAZDA CX-80, and the ZEEKR X. The most outstanding performance was set by the Mercedes-Benz E-Class, which topped the overall safety score of cars tested last year [1].

“The automotive industry had a challenging year in 2024 marked by weak consumer confidence and difficult economic conditions. Given these difficulties, Euro NCAP finds it especially encouraging that car makers continue to place significant emphasis on safety innovation and equipping cars with the newest safety systems. This firmly places consumer safety at the forefront of automobile design, as it ought to be.” – Dr. Michiel van Ratingen, Secretary General Euro NCAP

In the Large Family Car class, the Best in Class was achieved by the Volkswagen Passat and its partner the Škoda Superb. The two vehicles, built on the same platform and part of the Volkswagen Group, delivered the same class-leading safety performance.

Chinese car makers saw another impressive performance with the very first electric pick-up tested in Europe by Euro NCAP. The Maxus eTERRON 9, a five-seat, four-door pick-up truck, scored highly across all four safety categories.

In 2024, there were no contenders for the Best in Class award in the Small Family Car class as the top-scoring vehicles had achieved a red-body part score in their safety testing, making them ineligible.

To define the ‘Best in Class,’ a calculation is made of the weighted sum of the scores in the four areas of active and passive safety assessment: Adult Occupant, Child Occupant, Pedestrian, and Safety Assist. This sum is used as the basis for comparison of the vehicles. Cars qualify for ‘Best in Class’ based on their rating with safety equipment that is fitted as standard.

Please note that from 2026 Euro NCAP will be changing the way we make our safety assessment. The five-star rating however will continue to remain a valid and trusted indicator of a new car’s safety performance.

[1] Some categories may not be represented as Euro NCAP has tested too few cars of that class in 2024.

More Information: euroncap.com/press
Author/Source: Euro NCAP

The text, images, graphics, sound files, animation files, video files and their arrangement on the news sites are all subject to Copyright and other intellectual property protection. The author resp. the authors can be find on the more information link.

Seal Beach, CA – According to the World Health Organization, more than 5,000 pedestrians are killed each week worldwide. The Governors Highway Safety Association reported that pedestrian fatalities in the USA have risen by 41% since 2008 – the highest in 30 years.

Starting in 2022, Euro NCAP announced that it will adopt the new advanced Pedestrian Legform Impactor (aPLI) in its testing. The aPLI weighs 24.9kg (55 lb), compared with the 13.2kg (29 lb) Flex PLI, and the mass distribution has been refined to be more biofidelic, top to bottom. The structural design has also been simplified to improve repeatability and reproducibility of results.

Like its Flex PLI predecessor, the aPLI features integrated data acquisition and sensors from DTS. The aPLI legform supports SLICE NANO, along with the 6DX PRO six degrees of freedom sensor package and the ARS PRO uniaxial angular rate sensor

Using the SLICE NANO stack extender, a special DTS mounting hardware solution designed for applications with limited height restrictions, the modular sensor layers can be split into two stacks, but still require only one BASE+. The standard aPLI configuration includes 18 sensor channels focused on three primary types of measurements: injury assessment, flight dynamics and vehicle impact

Embedding the data acquisition into the test article minimizes exposed cables throughout the leg and eliminates any trailing cables that could affect the launch.  DTS offers a complete turnkey solution engineered to maintain proper mass, center of gravity and moments to help advance pedestrian safety testing.