Accident studies indicate that a number of fatalities and serious injuries are caused by serious weaknesses of the rear seat back in cars. In October 2002, ANEC launched a research project whose findings confirm the danger that luggage can present to car occupants in the event of an accident.

In one of the ANEC crash tests, the luggage actually broke the rear seats and was projected towards the front thus injuring the car occupants sitting in the back of car and possibly those sitting in the front too.

The ANEC research project shows that there is an urgent need for more stringent regulations for rear seats. The International Regulation on rear seat strength testing (UN ECE-R17) is not very demanding in terms of test criteria.

In the ANEC crash test, we tested two cars (representing a robust and a less robust design) and carried out the test according to the international regulation as well as according to a more realistic test.

In the realistic test, the crash pulse was higher (the same as in the EuroNCAP   test on the car concerned) and there was more luggage in the boot of the car compared with the minimum luggage simulation in the regulation test.

ANEC also placed (child and small female) dummies in the back of the car, in order to obtain some information about the danger for car occupants.

High-speed films and digital pictures of the crash tests clearly demonstrate the danger that the luggage in the car boot presents to the car occupants in real life accidents.

ANEC will use the test results to lobby the European Commission, EuroNCAP and UN-ECE GRSP and WP29, the international committee dealing with car safety, in order to achieve more severe test specifications for rear seat strength.