A Canadian auto supplier wants to make smart headrests.
Windsor Machine Group, with in-house molding and foam production, has developed a headrest that can move forward, back, up, down and side to side while linked to a rear-facing camera or radar system. If the sensor picks up another vehicle in danger of hitting the back of your car, the headrest will automatically adjust to provide more protection from possible whiplash injuries.
Richard Truett of our sister paper Automotive News takes a long look at Windsor Machine's development of the True Active head restraint.
Movable headrests are not new, as Richard notes, with Volvo and Saab brands offering them in the 1990s. U.S. auto safety laws required changes to headrests in 2008 to place them closer to the head for additional protection in rear crashes. But that positioning isn't comfortable for most drivers, so they simply adjust them to a spot that may feel better when driving but isn't as effective.
Having a smart headrest that can move during an emergency can provide more protection. There are somewhere between 300,000 and 1 million whiplash injuries from crashes each year in the U.S. — the wide range due to the fact that many of these injuries aren't reported.
"It's an opportunity to get the occupants in a better position prior to impact and improve things earlier in a crash," Marcy Edwards, a senior research engineer at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, told Automotive News. "We think it has potential, but we have to find out for sure."
IIHS is helping finance studies on the True Active restraint. Windsor Machine hopes to have final results of the study in September.
