Starting on September 1, 2027, every new car and light truck sold in the United States will feature an additional chime by law. The Department of Transportation announced on Monday that rear seatbelt reminder systems, which have been mandatory in Europe since 2019, will be required in our market, too.
The late-2027 timeline suggests that carmakers have until the 2028 model year to comply with the new regulation, though it wouldn’t surprise us if some companies roll out this feature across their range well before the deadline. While the industry has a proven track record of resisting change, adding a seatbelt reminder system to the rear seats should be relatively cheap and straightforward, given that the technology already exists and is present in a great many models.
This is the same technology that beeps at you if you don’t wear a seatbelt while driving, but it covers rear-seat passengers, too. In a nutshell, a sensor detects that the seat is occupied, knows whether the seatbelt is buckled, and triggers a chime if it’s not. The idea is that the chime is annoying enough to convince the unbuckled passenger to buckle up, or at least make the driver beg them to. Sensors and the related wiring cost money, but the extra cost associated with the new regulation should be negligible at best.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said, in less direct terms than the ones we’re about to use, that going through the trouble of writing a new rule wouldn’t have been necessary if folks would just wear their darn seatbelt regardless of where they’re sitting. Traffic deaths spiked in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and roughly half of all occupants killed in a crash are not wearing a seatbelt. The NHTSA estimates that adding a seatbelt chime for the rear-seat passengers will prevent over 500 injuries and save approximately 50 lives annually.
Statistics published by the NHTSA paint a pretty sobering picture. It found that seatbelts reduce the risk of fatality for rear-seat passengers by 55% in cars and a whopping 74% for SUVs. And yet, in 2022 front seatbelt use stood at 91.6% while rear seatbelt use was at roughly 81.7%.
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