The statistics contained in this article came from a feature in the Canadian Chiropractor February 2003 edition. The piece was entitled Whiplash – Taking Preventative Measures. Here I must apologize to my American readers. The term “preventative” is an incredibly common linguistic screw-up in Canada. The word is actually ‘preventive’ as you Americans know, but we have developed many bad speech habits up her. What can I say, but…sorry?
Anyhow, in this article, the Insurance Bureau of Canada set out to study the use of headrests in cars. They hired 3 University professors to videotape hundreds of vehicles and drivers. The professors came to the conclusion that 53% of Canadian drivers might as well not have headrests at all. It seems that we all need to look at the position of our car’s headrests and adjust them properly. Headrest are effective restraints to limiting the extension or backwards motion of the head during a front- or rear-end collision, but only if they are positioned right.
A properly adjusted headrest requires 2 considerations: its height and closeness to the head it is supposed to help protect. If the top of your headrest is below your earlobe, it’s useless. The headrest should be more or less level with the top of your head. That’s probably 4-6 inches higher than the usual factory position, which is touching the seat. To obtain this height, you must extend most headrests upwards allowing the shiny bars to show.
The next factor to set is how close to the back of your head is the rest during normal driving conditions? The consensus of opinion is that you should have only 2 – 4 inches of space behind your head before you contact the headrest. The average driver in the study had more than ½ a head width of space, exceeding the recommendation by several inches. The problem is that in many vehicles, you can only adjust the headrest upwards, not forwards. Check yours out, read the manual. Is it reversible? Can it be pulled or tilted forwards?
I know it seems petty, but anything you can do to reduce the chances of serious injury in a car accident is well worth the little time and attention you spent fooling around with your headrest. The study found that only 14% of drivers had a well-positioned one with women three times more likely to than men to have a safe headrest. Check it out because as the article said, “Taking that extra minute to properly adjust your headrest may mean the difference between walking away from an accident or living with the pain and disruption of whiplash”. Good point!
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