Car seats should not recline. If engineers made the decision, car seats would recline at no more than 10% for safety's sake. It is the sales division that insists that car seats recline because people would refuse to buy a car with a seat that did not go back.

Having said that: you do not need to be reclined to submarine. It can also happen as a result of poor lower-back posture. Your hips should be against the back of the seat for the 3-point harness to work properly (though it's safer to slump with belt than with no belt).

On a long trip the odds are much better that my vehicle is safer if I can recline for an hour or two while my co driver is in the drivers seat. Then when it is my turn to drive I am much better rested and a better driver than if I had to sleep in the upright position.

It is better to avoid an accident than to try to survive one. I'll take my chances reclining in my seat. 95% of the time or more its in the upright position, but I reserve the right to decide if or when it declines, not some engineer or politician or a mommy that thinks she needs to be everyones mommy.

If it's just an hour or two, and if you are unable to rest while sitting up, consider pulling over. That's what I do. The risk of very serious injury vs. showing up an hour or two later is a no-brainer to me.

Crash helmets and never start the car's engine just to make sure that we will be 100% safe.

If you are stupid enough to allow your front passenger to recline their seat past 10%, or whatever, whilst the car is moving then perhaps it would be useful for you to stay awake and avoid having an accident.

Alternatively travel at 4 MPH whilst a man walks in front with a red flag.

Ummm.. this is the United States of America and the last I heard it is still a free country.

The point is I CHOOSE freely to nap while my co driver contiues down the road safely. I do not want to pull off of the road nor will I pull off to the side of the road for two hours. If the risk of injury scares you that much then stay home for crying out loud. Its a no brainer to me that you want to tell me how and what to do with my own life and its none of your business. The risk of serious injury is in my estimation so minute that I do not care about it one whit. Thats an equation free people are allowed to make.

Publish your best practices and suggestions if you feel the need but don't tell me I can't take a reclined nap while my co driver safely drives down the road. By the way, after a combined 1 1/2 million miles we have never ran into the back of anyone so our experience is far better than letting some wet behind the ears busybody tell us how we have to sit in our own vehicles.

As an engineer why don't you design a restraint system that people could use safely while they freely choose to recline and rest because their busy life does not allow them to sleep for hours at a time along a desolate stretch of highway.

Its a no brainer to me.

Mathematically speaking, those two hours are two hours of your life that you will never get back.

Suppose that your life is worth 40 years ( 80 / 2 ). Suppose that the risk of getting into a car accident in the span of those two hours is about 1 in 200. Now suppose that the chance that its a fatal one is 1 in 10 and that reclining back would have made the difference 1 in 2. Very liberal estimate btw. So that reclination on average costs you 1 in 4000 of your life, or 1 / 100th of an year. That comes out to you saving about 3.6 days, and note the very liberal estimate at the cost of 2 hours. Not to mention the extra time finding a motel, the money it costs, unless you plan on sleeping on the side of the road (I don't know how safe that is).

With that knowledge, maybe just get the driver to drive extra safe knowing that their passenger is reclining and you could get the probability to come down to 2 hours.

Unless you plan on giving us immortality (indefinite life-span) -- an unlikely scenario since you aren't a biological engineer-- the trade off seems pretty reasonable.

Do you also think everyone living in a plastic bubble is a no-brainer as well?

Yes, for an hour I'd say skip the hotel and just pull over. Find a safe spot and enjoy the seat recline function.

Or don't. All I can say is that submarining injuries, particularly at highways speeds, are very unpleasant. The mathematic equation doesn't really work because (1) you're not saving a portion of your life. Either you never get in an accident or you don't. (2) you're not just risking death, there are a whole range of really nasty injuries you can get.

Anyway, save the sneering outrage, it was just a suggestion.

To answer the question about why there isn't a belt that works while the seat reclines: the 3-point harness is not the only restraint option, it's a compromise in terms of safety and cost. It meets safety regulations and works well when used properly.

If anything is going to change it will be something like what is suggested in the article: a warning bell or sticker telling you not to recline while the car is in motion. That does not drive up the cost of production (in other words, the cost to consumers).

So is this bell going to ring incessently for the entire two hours I take my nap? Because that will be very irritating and cause me to disconnect the thing, and throw it far, far away.

And then like seat belts will we get to enjoy laws where the police will pull us over and demand 100 dollars because we were not sitting in our own vehicles the way somebody else wants us too?

Nah, put another stupid sticker in the car and let people make up their own minds on their own priorities.

As an engineer I would think you would relish a challenge to make a belt that would be safe to use in the reclining position. Putting in a bell or a sticker is a cop out. A five year old could do that.

So I wouldn't have been able to transport that table I bought at the Salvation Army last week because I wouldn't be able to recline the front seat. Maybe I made the wrong decision in buying an affordable, efficient, non-SUV passenger car.

Please die.

How much efficency do you think you lost hauling the table when you could have rented a hybrid truck designed to haul exactly that?

Everyone KNOWS the seats recline for SEX which is not reccomended while the vehicle is in motion.

Hey, auto engineer, just wanted to say thanks for your comments, it's good to know about from someone who is knowledgable.

If you do come back after getting such hostile replies - the article mentioned that the paraplegic woman also had her feet up on the dash. Do you know how much that contributes to the severity of the injury? What about sitting crosslegged in the seat?

Thanks!

Labeling or restricting seat motion is not going to work. The only solution is to think about the risks you are taking with each action in a car--I was reading a map in the passenger seat in our car when we were rear ended at 55 mph at a stoplight. Everyone else was unharmed, but I struck the dash and ended up in the hospital, just because I was leaning slightly forward to read. So should map reading be forbidden while a car is in motion? It was an important lesson that everything you do poses a risk, and you must assess whether the time saved is worth what's at stake. I no longer recline or even lean forward in my seat.

The purpose of a seat belt is to keep you from moving continuing to move forward when the vehicle stops moving forward. The common 3-point seatbelt accomplishes this with wide belts that displace energy across your torso and pelvis.

If you are lying down, the only practical way to contain forward motion is to place a belt between your legs.

Some companies use 20g's as a frontal impact load target. Therefore, if you weigh 150 lbs, you wil now have 3,000 lbs of force being exerted on your crotch.

That ought to get your seatback standing upright.

I agree. Why a car is designed with features that UNDO safety features is beyond me.

When cars are tested for crash ratings, are they also tested with seats fully reclined? Because they should be tested with all of the permutations the car's design allows.