Backseat: Consumer Reports presents its 2021-2022 ranking

Consumer Reports has just released a brand-new rating on backseat occupant safety, which is often overlooked in safety evaluations because they are mostly concentrated on the front row or outside the vehicle.

This new evaluation by the organization is therefore interesting at a time when safety has become a major issue in today’s market. CR focused its study on six aspects to score a few 2021 models (25 of them) and a few 2022 models (10 of them).

These include shell-type seat adjustment, booster seat adjustment, rear occupant alert, rear belt reminder, rear headrests and even forward headrests.

“The rear seat needs to take into account all types of passengers sitting in it, from children and teens to adults and other carpool passengers of all ages,” said Dr. Emily Thomas, an automotive safety engineer with Consumer Reports. The principal also added, “But our analysis shows that many automakers don’t put the same safety features in the back seat as they do in the front.”

Among its initial findings, the organization notes that a minority (40 percent) of vehicles are equipped with seat belt pretensioners in the rear. What’s more, 30 percent of those vehicles come with a seat belt reminder, while just over a quarter of those same vehicles have side airbags to protect the midsection of passengers in collisions.

Further down, here are the top 10 lists for 2021 and 2022 respectively. The list shows that the Toyota Sienna is the best equipped in this first evaluation of rear occupant safety and that the Genesis G80 sedan is the worst (of the models evaluated) in this regard. For its part, the Nissan Pathfinder is first in class… for the 2022 model year.