The chest is the most frequently injured body region in fatal and severe injury frontal collisions, and mid‐sternum deflection is used as an indicator for assessing the chest injury risk. It is understood that a seatbelt load limiter helps reduce the magnitude of deflection. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine the correlation between the seatbelt load and the mid‐sternum deflection and other possible indicators for estimating chest injury risk. A total of twenty‐one frontal collision simulations were conducted changing seatbelt parameters such as the load limiter value, the airbag pressure and the seatbelt type. The seatbelt load, the mid‐sternum deflection, the local chest deflections, the number of rib fractures and the principal strain in the internal organs were calculated using human body finite element (FE) models:​ THUMS Version 4 AF05, AM50 and AM95. The results indicated that the mid‐sternum deflection was not necessarily reduced by solely lowering the load limiter value but was determined by the combination of the seatbelt load and the airbag load. A significant correlation was found between the injury risk and the local deflection close to the injury location. The calculated local chest deflections at multiple locations indicated relative injury risk to the internal organs under the given loading condition.