Headrests designed to prevent whiplash by popping forwards in a crash may reduce the risk of such injury by 75 per cent, according to the first field study.
Dave Viano, an expert in traffic injury prevention at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, studied 18 months鈥� of Swedish insurance company records for Saab cars fitted with the Saab Active Head Restraint (SAHR), first introduced in 1997. The restraint is designed to pop forwards to cushion a person鈥檚 head during a crash.
Viano compared these records with those for Saab models with ordinary headrests. He found that people in cars with the SAHR were 75 percent less likely to suffer from symptoms associated with whiplash injury.
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鈥淰ery early in a rear crash the seat is pushed forward, your body presses in and those forces are the ones that cause the neck whipping action,鈥� Viano told 快猫短视频.
The SAHR has a lever mechanism in the seat that uses the force of the body pushing into the seat to raise and move the headrest forward. 鈥淭his gives much earlier support to the head and neck,鈥� Viano says.
Richard Lowne of the UK Transport Research Laboratory鈥檚 Vehicle Safety Department says this is the first study to show the benefit of such headrests. 鈥淚t鈥檚 interesting and would make sense.鈥�
But Lowne adds that studies of whiplash are often complicated by disagreement over causes and symptoms of the injury: 鈥淭here is no clinical way of determining whether someone has whiplash. There are many theories about what causes it.鈥�
The research was presented at the Institute of Physics Congress in Brighton, UK on 9 April.