The Problem
In the U.S., the regulation governing the strength of automotive seats is Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard number 207. It requires that the seats in your car be capable of withstanding a force applied forwards or backwards that’s equivalent to 20 times the weight of the seat itself, but allows for 40 degrees of seat deflection under that strain. That’s a problem because that force is static, not dynamic (equivalent to slowly pushing or pulling on the seat really hard), which fails to account for the incredibly rapid acceleration objects inside a vehicle experience in a crash. It s also just not strong enough.