[Goat Bandit]

There is a good post by SwatSurgeon that talks alot about blast injuries.
More specifically he stated this:
 Tertiary injuries – Blunt trauma.
– Physically thrown through the air and strike or impale themselves on objects.
– Collapsing structures.
– Other objects propelled through the air striking the victim

I think that the foam would qualify as a collpsing sructure. I do know that the bolts sometimes shear off in certain situations where the vehicle is hit hard enough or is involved in a serious wreck. It would make sense to have as much padding as practical to absorb the shock of being thrown around, but I have never experienced the concussion of an IED inside of my vehicle. Nor do I know someone that was wearing a seatbelt when they were. What we have experienced in the realm of IED's was mainly a lot of fragmentation for those that were effective. We have lost more men to vehicle wrecks than from enemy action, and it was determined that not using seat belts was one of the reasons why the injuries were so severe.
So I really don't know the answer. I'm sure the seats were tested in the standard configuration with a crash test dummy in a lab. I doubt if the test HMMWV had a Frag 5 kit on it and if the dummy was wearing body armor. I'd like to see more research on blast injuries inside of a HMMWV, and ways to mitigate. If anyone has links please post them on the proper forum. I'll do some more research on the seat and post what I can.