Though it’s often called a headrest, a head restraint isn’t for comfort. It’s a safety provision, pure and simple. Though its main purpose is to protect the occupant’s head from snapping backward in a rear-end collision, occupants tend to bounce back and forth in any type of crash. For instance, in a frontal impact, you may fly forward into the airbag, but there’s a good chance you’ll then flop back, and you want a head restraint there to keep your head from continuing backward and straining your neck. Head restraints are also important for backseat passengers, though they may interfere with the driver’s rear visibility, depending on the vehicle.
A properly adjusted head restraint comes up to the top of your ears. If the seat’s head restraint doesn’t come up this high, or is fixed in one position that also is too low (as is the case with some high-back bucket seats), this probably isn’t the model or trim level for you to buy. (Seats may differ from one trim level to the next.) Note that in a growing number of power front seats, the seat cushion raises and lowers independently of the backrest, so a higher cushion height puts the occupant’s head higher relative to the head restraint. (I’m not wild about this design because tall people who like to sit high must compromise.)
The best head restraints rise plenty high and also adjust forward and backward. The closer the restraint is to your noggin, the less space there is for your noggin to accelerate before hitting it. This lessens the chance of noggin injury, or, more precisely, muscular or spinal injury in the neck. Active head restraints take this a step further by moving forward to catch your head during a collision.
Some luxury-car manufacturers have taken to motorizing their vehicles’ head restraint height adjustments. It may seem a luxury frivolity, but the value is that the headrest’s position typically can be saved in a memory along with the seat and mirror positions. This way, two drivers of different stature don’t have to remember to adjust the head restraint every time they take the car from the other. That makes the power adjustments safety features in themselves.
Information for this was taken from the Cars.com’s glossary, written by Joe Wiesenfelder.
Learn more
See if your question has already been asked and answered
Your question has been successfully submitted to Ask.cars.com. It will now be reviewed by our editors and we'll answer it soon if we think it's a useful question. You will be notified via e-mail when the answer is posted. Ask.cars.com tackles your questions about new cars and the car-buying process. Unfortunately we can't answer questions regarding:
Have our experts answer any of your questions about new cars.
Don't worry — we won't publish your last name or email.
