Open-bay seating is a common configuration in U.S. passenger railcars. The current version of the American Public Transportation Association’s safety standard on passenger seating (APTA PR-CS-S-016-99, Rev. 3) requires open-bay seats to be tested if more than 50 percent of a car’s seating is configured as open-bay. The objective of this research study was to determine if existing seats  developed for use in a row-to-row configuration would comply with the seat safety standard requirements in the open-bay configuration without any design modifications. Of the four seat types tested, only one satisfied all of the human injury criteria.