A newly developed technique to place instrumentation on the anterior aspect of the bodies of the cervical vertebrae and the first thoracic vertebra was proposed to measure detailed neck kinematics in rear impact tests. The instrumentation technique is capable of measuring kinematics at each vertebral level from the second cervical vertebra (C2) to the first thoracic vertebra (T1), while minimizing damage to the neck muscles and soft tissues. Lab trial tests to validate the instrumentation technique were conducted using post mortem human subjects (PMHS) in a rigid rolling chair to simulate 10 km/h rear impact events. Three accelerometers and three angular rate sensors were installed on five of the cervical vertebrae (C3 – C7) to measure the translational (x- & z- direction) and angular (y- direction) displacements during the event. Steinman pins with fiducials were embedded in each vertebral body to record kinematics using a high speed camera (1000 Hz), for comparison with data from the proposed instrumentation (20 kHz). All instrumentation blocks including the fiducials were digitized using a FARO arm, and local coordinate systems were created on each block to measure the initial Euler angles used for transformation of the local coordinates to the global (lab) coordinate system. Results from the lab trial shows that our proposed technique is capable of accurately measuring detailed neck kinematics during rear impact tests. The next phase of this study is to test Post-Mortem Human Subjects (PMHS) in rear impact sled test conditions to quantify the detailed cervical kinematics and generate data which can be used to assess the internal and external biofidelity of the existing rear impact dummies utilizing the NHTSA Biofidelity Ranking System.