You didn’t test drive the same model before plunking-down your money?
Funny stuff. If one or two designs were uncomfortable to you, I would call it possibly a result of design choices. However, they are ALL designed to this standard now so it’s unlikely that every seat engineer in the industry is a lousy engineer.
Since, in your estimation, WE know how to properly design one, why aren’t you helping the situation rather than sniping from the sidelines about how easy it is to fix the “problem” that YOU are experiencing? Show us a design that works for everybody that isn’t cost prohibitive…
I had a 2018 Wrangler Unlimited as a rental. I didn’t notice the headrests. The 2013 F150 that I owned for less than a year - those headrests bothered me. They touched the back of my head, pushing my head down. I had them adjusted as far rearward as they would go. I can’t imagine anyone adjusting them forward. Yes, I test drove it, but I assumed I’d be able to adjust them or that I’d get used to them. Lesson learned. So I feel for the OP.
I have noticed headrests (head restraints) being a bit more intrusive in a lot of newer vehicles, probably due to the safety reasons mentioned above. It doesn’t seem like it would be that big of a deal to offer a little more rearward adjustability to them, without sacrificing safety. In a collision, if my head were to fly back 2 inches rather than 1 inch and hit the head restraint…so what? I say if they’re uncomfortable, remove them and bend the posts back a bit to where they’re not touching your head constantly.
Good posture would be sitting with your spine and neck aligned. Bad posture would be hunched over - in which case the head rest wouldn’t bother you 
Easy. Allow 1 inch additional rearward adjustability… What would be the problem with that?
Turbo, I have in fact ridden in cars with comfortable seats and head restraints. Some of them were even Chiseler Corporation vehicles of the same era as my Wrangler, such as the 2014 Chrysler Town & Country. The Jeep Wrangler (2007-2018) is not one of them.
VDCdriver, if you can find another vehicle that will do what the Jeep Wrangler will do, let me know. I use it for what it was designed for, not for mall crawling. Believe me, I don’t want to support Chiseler Corporation or their amazingly incompetent dealerships (six weeks to get an appointment to do a warranty fix? For real? Sheesh!), but I also enjoy going out to places where a less capable vehicle would leave its guts on the rocks long before it got there. I’m into ghost towning, and for some reason many of these ghost town sites no longer have maintained roads to them. (Like, duh?). So I modified my Jeep to be as comfortable to me as its basic design would allow. I shouldn’t have to do that for a $40K vehicle though.
Basic design on a 2018 Wrangler? Hell of a lot more advanced and refined than the CJ 5 I owned 
. No headrests to bother you. And just a lap belt!
I had an M38A1 Jeep with every government required option. Not included was a heater, seat belts, roll bar, radio, or doors. And the driver sat on the fuel tank. But it was equipped with fording gear to drive in water up to the dash board however there were no life preservers. The Marines were still using those equipped with communications equipment in 1969 and they out performed the Ford designed M151. I see various brand ATVs that look more useful than either of those military Jeeps though.
Some have had better luck replacing the head restraints with ones from a Grand Cherokee, if you don’t want to bend the arms to make the stock ones more upright.
Heh, John, you don’t have to tell me that. Your old CJ 5 would also have your kidneys bleeding after an hour on the highway. By “basic design” I was referring to the fundamental limitations of the manufacturer’s design, not implying that a $40,000 Jeep was somehow crude or rudimentary. Nothing I do, for example, will ever make a vehicle sporting heavy offroad tires and solid axles ride smoothly or quietly. The fundamental design of the vehicle is contrary to that. Though at least the switch to coil springs made it so you could drive it for hours without needing to recuperate in a hospital due to ruptured organs!
In the case of the seats in my 2012 Wrangler, they are terrible, they are designed to force you to hunch over like my 90 year old great-grannie who had a hunchback. They did this to position the crash test dummies right for the airbags, and it’s a very comfortable position if you’re a crash test dummy. For us humans, we can make it bearable if we add aftermarket lumbar supports so that we aren’t forced to hunch forward in the seat. The head restraints… it’s not so much the position, it’s the shape. They jut forward at an angle rather than having a flat surface for you to rest your head against. It feels like your head is being pressed forward by a knife edge as a very tiny surface at the top of the head restraint pushes your head forward. Again, this isn’t an issue if you’re a crash test dummy, if you’re a crash test dummy you’ll find this to be quite comfortable. But of course I’m not a crash test dummy, and neither are the literally thousands of people on the various Jeep forums who’ve complained about these head rests only to be told “we have to do it because of crash tests.” Despite the fact that other cars made by the exact same manufacturer, such as the Fiat 500 and Chrysler Town & Country, don’t have this problem…
So anyhow, I can modify these things to be more comfortable, or replace them with other head restraints that are more comfortable. But claiming that it was impossible for the manufacturer to make them more comfortable – when other cars in the exact same manufacturer’s stable don’t have the problem – is ridiculous. It’s just excusing bad engineering. I don’t know why some people want to excuse bad engineering, but bad engineering is bad engineering regardless of excuses. The purpose of these seats is to be comfortable for people, not for crash test dummies. They fail.
Easy. Allow 1 inch additional rearward adjustability… What would be the problem with that?
If it’s so easy it should be no big deal to illustrate your design that allows it, meets the regulatory specifications and is not cost prohibitive. BTW, the adjustment mechanism better not fail in an accident or you will lose millions. Go!
EDIT- Oh yeah forgot one more detail. Set aside some cash for the user that has it adjusted as far back as it goes and then gets whiplash in an accident. Prepare your statements to defend how you allowed that situation to exist in your design.
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You might look at the design of the head restraint on the Chrysler Town & Country, then. It has a ratchet mechanism. In case of a rear end crash, it ratchets forward until it contacts the person’s head, and stays ratcheted closed there to prevent whiplash. It does this faster than the head can move backwards. The ratchet mechanism can be reset after the accident so that the head restraint is back in a more comfortable position again.
There’s also the mechanism used in some high-end Lexus and other luxury vehicles. This has a plate behind the person in the seat that is attached to a lever mechanism. In case of the person in the seat being pressed back by a rear end collision, the lever mechanism pushes the head restraint forward until it contacts the person’s head. This is happening as fast as the head can move backwards, so contacts the head well before whiplash can happen.
There’s all sorts of engineering that can be done on head restraints to make them more comfortable, and there are manufacturers who have done it – including Fiat-Chrysler. Why they don’t put this technology into more of their cars, especially their new Jeeps that cost $40K and up, eludes me. It’s as if they don’t care about passenger comfort. Hmm…
You keep saying that, but it isn’t true. Just go look at a picture of a crash test dummy. There’s no Alien chest-exploding going on there.
To me it sounds like you’ve got your seatback ramrod straight. When your seatback is ramrod straight, you need the headrests to be where they are so you don’t get whiplash when some idiot rearends you.
If you want to solve the problem, tilt the seatback toward the rear.
Safety is not always comfortable. Sit in a racing seat sometime. It’s not exactly something you’d want to do a road trip in.
Fortunately, there’s a handy seatback tilt button that will make you more comfortable. There’s no need to sit like you’re in charm school when you’re driving.
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Again, you don’t get my point. It is possible to have comfortable head restraints. I even gave you examples, one of which is even from Chiseler Corporation, the manufacturer of the Jeep Wrangler. Yet you and others continue to defend bad engineering. Are you in the pay of Chiseler Corporation or something?!
If you can see your way clear to stop acting like a boorish jerk with people who respond to you, and take the time to actually read what we write rather than thinking about how to phrase your next abrasive comment, you will note that you have been offered a number of solutions to your discomfort, and that no one is discounting the idea that the headrests aren’t comfortable.
Oh, and @cdaquila, @neck_pain is a spammer that somehow managed to escape notice the last time they posted the same ad for their product back in December.
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Not a spammer. I’ve replied twice because I spent a long time trying to fix my own headrests, and had a ton of pain before. Just wanted to share something good.
You seem to be the person who sells the product and not just a random user. By that you are Spam and trying to get free advertising.
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Illustrate my design? OK. I’ll draw a picture of a little headrest tilting back and forth. With Crayons. So no head rests are adjustable anymore? They were in the 2013 f150 I owned. But they aren’t in my wife’s 2013 highlander. Oddly, the highlander seats are more comfortable to me.
You’re basically saying there’s no way to safely engineer a headrest that’s safe, other than the exact way each manufacturer does it? Does each manufacturer design the seats exactly the same? I don’t think they do.
What’s Chiseler corporation? 
Seems to me, if you can adjust the seat back near vertical (I assume some people sit that way), it only makes sense that the headrest would need to adjust backwards. Otherwise you’ve got seat adjustments that you can’t use because the headrest is in the way of your head. Doesn’t seem like that’s a logical choice for the design team to leave it that way. “Yes, I know the seat back adjusts to that position.” “You’re not supposed to use that position, though, just ignore that.”
With all the talk here about regulations, whiplash, crash test dummies, etc, I think it’s easy to overlook the underlying complaint here. Namely that there is an overwhelming trend of placing perceived safety ahead of ease and comfort. Surely I’m not the only one who values being comfortable while driving more than having a safety device which in all likelihood I’ll never need.
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