Torque Shop: Seat belts for rear passengers
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In Singapore, rear passengers are required by law to be belted up.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: UNSPLASH
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How important are rear seatbelts? Is it compulsory for passengers in the rear seat to wear them?
The rear seatbelts are part of the primary occupant restraint system in a passenger vehicle. They are indeed crucial in alleviating bodily injury in a traffic accident.
In Singapore, rear passengers are required by law to be belted up. Convicted first-time offenders can be fined up to $1,000 or jailed for up to three months. For repeat offenders, the penalty can be a fine not exceeding $2,000 or imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months.
During a frontal collision, unrestrained rear-seat passengers are likely to be flung towards the back of the front seats, which are not designed to cushion a “speeding” human body.
Facial injuries such as lacerations, broken nose and, in severe cases, blunt force trauma are not uncommon. Unbelted rear-seat passengers who wear spectacles have been known to sustain deep facial cuts.
In addition, the occupant of a front seat that is impacted by a rear-seat passenger can sustain secondary injuries.
The most disastrous cases are when rear passengers are thrown out of the vehicle during a rollover or a T-bone crash. A human flung out of a vehicle has a very slim chance of survival. Few have survived with fully recoverable injuries and even less fortunate are those who survive with debilitating paralysis.
The use of front seatbelts became compulsory in 1973, when all cars were required to have them as standard factory equipment.
Most front-seat passengers, fortunately, do use their seatbelts. It is the rear seatbelt ruling that possibly ranks as the most flouted road traffic rule in Singapore.
It was mandatory for cars registered from 1993 to be equipped with rear seatbelts and for passengers seated in the back to be buckled up. This also means you are not allowed to carry four people in the back seat if the car has only three rear seatbelts.
Both the vehicle’s driver and passengers face penalties for not wearing seatbelts in a moving car.
