Preventing whiplash
Look for cars with good support, adjust head restraints and always wear seatbelts
It has long been the butt of jokes about “ambulance-chasing lawyers,” but whiplash is a potentially serious injury.
It’s also a challenge for automakers to engineer seats that help to prevent it. Young children can also be at risk and parents should look for car seats with the right features. Whiplash is the colloquial term for what doctors call a neck sprain or strain or hyperextension and hyperflexion.
We have heavy heads perched on thin necks; think of a bobblehead doll on a spring. If your vehicle is hit from behind, your body is thrown forward while your head snaps backward.
When the seatbelt tightens, that sudden stop causes your head to pitch forward. These movements can stretch the muscles and ligaments in your neck and back or cause joint or spinal-disk injury. While neck pain is common, other symptoms can include back pain, dizziness, blurred vision or pain in the shoulders or arms.
The best way to help prevent whiplash is to buy a vehicle with good seat support, adjust the head restraints properly and wear the seatbelt correctly.
Cars seldom had head restraints until the U.S. made them mandatory on the two outboard front seats for the 1969 model year, but most of those shorter-stature seats still provided inadequate protection.
More recently, Canada and the U.S. mandated a minimum height from the seat cushion to the top of the head restraint, along with a requirement that the restraints be about five centimetres behind the occupant’s head.
Some automakers initially met that minimum-distance requirement by tipping the restraint forward with the result being that many drivers complained the restraint pushed their chins onto their chests.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) in the U.S. includes head-restraint and seat performance in its crash tests, but other than the height requirements there’s no federal mandate for how well the restraints must perform and some do better than others.
To prevent whiplash, the head and torso have to move together, so that the head doesn’t snap excessively on its own.
How the seats and restraints work can depend on the type of system the automaker uses. In some, a mechanism moves the head restraint forward when it detects the occupant is rapidly moving backward, known as active head restraints, while others depend on the restraint’s geometry to keep the head in line with the spine. No matter what kind of seat your vehicle has, you can help reduce your risk of injury by adjusting everything properly. The head restraint should be adjusted up or down until it’s at least at the level of your ears and preferably even with the top of your head or a little higher. If you can roll your head backward over the top of the restraint, it’s not going to do you any good in a crash. It should also be adjusted to be no more than five centimetres away from the back of your head.
You may also have to adjust both the seatback and your steering wheel so your head is protected, but you’re not sitting too close to the airbag in the wheel.
If there’s too much room between your head and the restraint, your head could still snap around enough to cause injury. You also need to sit straight, so the restraint is completely behind you and your head won’t slip sideways around it in a crash. Your seatbelt needs to be worn across your chest. Never wear it under your arm. Putting infants into rear-facing seats helps protect them from neck injuries. Children should stay in these rear-facing seats for as long as possible. For front-facing seats, look for a headrest that can be adjusted to the right height as the child grows and be sure the head is never above the headrest. Tighten the harness so you can only get one finger between the strap and the child’s collarbone.