British medical and road safety research teams have revealed the need for improvement in vehicle seating designs to eliminate serious injuries and deaths arising from car occupant movement and ejection during impact.

The paper describes the main requirements of safety seating and the result of three years development work in Britain to produce effective seats and mountings of low cost, capable of being fitted into conventional vehicles and of coping with forward loads of over 30 G. It is estimated that the adoption of such seats would increase the vehicle cost by less than 2%.