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2026 SUBARU OUTBACK — SEATS

3 injured · 2244114 · 2026-09-07

Vehicle

Make
SUBARU
Model
OUTBACK
Year
2026
Manufacturer
Subaru of America, Inc.
Component
SEATS
Speed
35 mph

Severity

Deaths
0
Injured
3
Fire
No
Crash
No
Police report
No
Medical attention
Yes
Vehicle towed
No

Narrative

Incident Summary: On August 23, 2026, a multi-occupant injury event occurred during routine city braking due to an inherent occupant packaging design defect in the vehicle’s front seating and sun visor layout. The vehicle exhibits a static seat-to-visor clearance of 79 cm versus a standard median adult sitting height of 95 cm, result of negative 16cm headroom clearance. During normal city deceleration (0.2g–0.4g), seatbelt inertia reels remain unlatched under FMVSS 209 tolerances, allowing normal forward upper-torso pitch. This causes adult occupants' foreheads to strike the lower edge of the stowed sun visor, resulting in head impacts, neck strain, and concussion symptoms. A service representative at Capitol Subaru personally observed the hazard during intake. Subaru Quality Assurance inspected the vehicle but closed the file by relate it to quality issue as claiming no "part manufacturing defects" exist, while ignoring the negative physical clearance envelope as saftey issue. Subaru's recommended workaround—sliding the seat back and make seat lean backward—does not eliminate visor contact during forward torso pitch and severely compromises rear-cabin legroom, causing physical leg entrapment and impact injuries to rear passengers during this same deceleration event. On the driver side, sliding rearward prevents safe operational reach to the brake and accelerator pedals, even with these saftey issue highlighted to Subaru, they keep insist to slide seat back to clear the

Source

Authoritative
NHTSA ODI Flat-File Downloads
ODI Number
11762630
Machine
JSON-LD · Markdown