Know Your Car: Importance of Head Restraints (Rest) and How to Adjust Them

As per a study conducted by World Health Organization, 1.35 million people died in road accidents globally and 50 million were injured in 2018. While high speed driving and drunk driving are considered to be the leading causes of road fatalities, not all of them die or get injure due to their own fault. Various studies have concluded that over 50 percent of the injuries and deaths caused during a road accident are due to someone else's fault.

So it becomes obvious for anyone on road to take appropriate safety measures, seat belt among which, is at the priority list. However, little do people know that head rests, or technically speaking, head restraints can also save you from serious injuries, or in some case, even death.

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While many consider head restraints as head rests for comfortable driving, truth be told, they were added in vehicles to reduce whiplash, hence reducing serious injuries to neck. As explained in the video here, when the car is in motion, or at stand still and if another vehicle hits you from behind, there's a force generated that pushes your vehicles instantly.

However, since our body is at rest inside the vehicle, it also gets tossed around and you are instantly pushed towards the dashboard at high speed. If you are wearing a seatbelt, an airbag will deploy saving you from serious head injury, but the momentum generated will throw your neck back again towards the seat. Without a restrain, you might suffer serious damage to neck and in some cases death too. Hence, it becomes important for everyone to not remove head restraints from your vehicle.

Which brings us to the next point, how to adjust head restraints for car seats? In most of the cases, head restraints can be adjusted pretty easily by pushing a button next to the restraint for lifting it up, or you can press it down otherwise too. A good position of the head rest will ensure you are comfortable as well as safe. As a general rule, the upper end of the head rest must match the upper end of your head and should fall in the same line. However, if your height is too low or too high for head restraint to adjust accordingly, then you can put it in its lowest or highest state as required.

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