The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has finalized a rule to require seatbelt use warnings for rear seats and enhanced warnings for driver and front passenger seats.

NHTSA estimates the new rule will prevent more than 500 injuries and save about 50 lives yearly, once fully implemented.

The final rule amends Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 208, “Occupant crash protection,” which previously required a seatbelt warning only for the driver’s seat.

The new requirements apply to passenger cars, trucks, and buses except school buses, and multi-purpose passenger vehicles with a gross vehicle weight rating of up to 10,000 pounds.

Manufacturers will have to meet the front seat requirements on new vehicles beginning Sept. 1, 2026 and on rear seats beginning Sept. 1, 2027.

“Wearing a seatbelt is one of the easiest and most effective ways to prevent injury and death in a vehicle crash,” said NHTSA Chief Counsel Adam Raviv, in a news release. “While seatbelt use has improved for decades, there’s still more we can do to make sure everyone buckles up. These new requirements will help to increase seatbelt use, especially for rear seat passengers, by enhancing reminders for vehicle occupants to buckle up.”

Seatbelt warning systems, also called reminder systems, use visual and audible alerts to encourage seatbelt use. Usage rates for rear-seat passengers have consistently been below those for front seats, with front-seat belt use at about 91.6% and rear-seat at about 81.7% in 2022, according to NHTSA.

Half of all passenger vehicle occupants who died in crashes in 2022 were unbelted, according to data from NHTSA’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System.

Earlier this year, NHTSA also finalized a new requirement for passenger cars and light trucks to come equipped with automatic emergency braking (AEB) systems, including pedestrian AEB, by 2029 and updated its 5-Star Safety Ratings program. The New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) now includes new advanced driver assistance technologies, a crashworthiness pedestrian protection program, and a roadmap for future program changes over the next 10 years.

NHTSA says the initiatives support the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Roadway Safety Strategy, launched in January 2022. The goal of the strategy is to reach zero deaths on U.S. roads.

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