Latest safety standards require that passenger car seats be only sufficiently strong to withstand 20 times their own weight during a collision. However, front seats should withstand the 30 G rear passenger impacts during frontal impacts. The current conventional car seat design cannot accommodate direct attachment of restraining systems or direct loading from rear seat occupants.

This paper discusses seat concepts evaluated and reported upon in recent years. In addition, recommendations derived from full-scale collision experiments are discussed by the authors.