“Whaddya want from me?”

If your vehicle is equipped, you can try adjusting seat pan (bottom of seat) tilt. Adjusting it upwards will tend to move your chest away and has a similar effect as reclining the seat back, but it lifts your thighs and tilts the pelvis. For shorter people adjusting the pan upwards may reduce their visibility by making their eyes lower in the car and it can make the effective distance to the pedals longer, but it does help resist “submarining” which is where in a crash you slide out from under the seat belt, which can result in all sorts of injuries including commonly, leg and torso/back. If you tilt the pan forward you may be able to reach the pedals easier while more or less keeping the same sight line, but you may increase the risk of submarining. If the seat has tilt, there is a good chance it has height adjustment- especially if it is a power seat.

Height adjustment can be an obvious one to adjust for shorter people. Raising the seat up can raise your sight line and increase visibility while brining your head higher above the airbag to a safer distance, but it can increase the distance your legs need to span to reach the pedals. Lowering the seat can have the opposite effects.
So what to do if you can’t find a seating position that is at least a workable compromise between comfort, safety, and control, you are having trouble reaching the pedals while keeping 10” between you and the air bag, and/or your vehicle doesn’t have adjustable pedals…?

Get pedal extenders. In theory they are simple enough to make but because the pedals are so critical in controlling the vehicle and any failure or flaw in home made extenders could be fatal to you or others on the streets I won’t advocate DIY here. Instead, go to one of the numerous reputable sellers of such ergonomic aids or contact your vehicle manufacturer/dealer and make an inquiry on pedal extenders and if necessary, installation.
Pedal extenders bring the pedals closer to the driver and make it much easier for shorter people to maintain proper control of the vehicle while keeping a safe seating position and having more options for positions that offer comfort, safety, and control. There are other options as well for ergonomics to properly fit a vehicle, it is extremely common in the worlds of motorcycles and racing cars to fit a car to a driver, those two groups tend to take safety and car control very seriously as well try to maximize comfort as able to increase…

.. driver ability and control. Those race car seats and the fancy gear selector knobs and all that- that is what they are really about when they aren’t being used by “magazine racers” and show offs- they exist to help fit the car. A person wouldn't likely got about everyday in pants so long they trip over them or in glasses with the wrong prescription or sleeping in a bed their body won’t fit in- so why should it be silly to get your car fitted better for you? Now, modern cars tend to have airbags in the seats and everywhere that make replacing things like seats or steering wheels not the safest decision- but properly designed and installed pedal extenders can do wonders and not interfere with complex modern automotive safety systems.

Some people will wear platform shoes for driving to mitigate height issues. This is generally not safe. You may ask why pedal extenders are ok when platforms are “basically the same thing” but.. they aren’t. It’s physics. To avoid too long an explanation I’ll put it this way- tires are rubber and the road is asphalt- so would it be the same thing if car tires were asphalt and roads were rubber? No. Just because the elements remain the same doesn’t mean the particulars and details do when the application is changed. So it isn’t super likely driving in platforms will kill you or anything- but it is far from optimal for many safety reasons.

Ultimately you may have tried all the options and not be able to find something that works for you in your particular car and allows you to see well, maintain your distance from the wheel, be in a good position for operating the controls, maintain safety in a collision, and/or be comfortable.
In that case… you might look in to the option of drivers air bag disabling- the legal route can cost a little money and require some paperwork and not everyone who is “short” qualifies as there are criteria for HOW SHORT you must be generally- and there are simple but not strictly legal ways to disable or deactivate an airbag which have legal and safety risks so I won’t recommend those. If you can’t or don’t want to disable the air bag then there is one “smart” choice left really-

Buy a new vehicle. This time, test drive before you buy. That’s just a good general tip that soooo many people overlook because they are shopping based on a budget or a “dream car” they have some image of, or they are going off consumer reports etc- but a car that doesn’t fit you is like underwear that don’t fit. No matter what other people review them as- they don’t fit you. So when you buy a car, new or used, REALLY get to know the model if you aren’t familiar. Pay attention to the things most important to your daily routine with the car. So many people end up complaining or unhappy about noise or ride quality or storage space, how their car doesn’t have a place to put their purse or their sunglasses etc or is cramped or the seats aren’t comfortable etc etc…
And most importantly regardless of height you should be checking that you can see out of the car, work the controls properly, sit comfortably and safety…

Is “buy a new car” a bit extreme? Perhaps- but like… come on… when you already own a car is a bit late to find out it doesn’t fit you isn’t it? That would be a touch like paying for prescription lenses without an exam and then hoping they are correct when they arrive. Cars are expensive and buying them can be too- but glasses and pants are much cheaper and if they can’t be returned most people will put more effort into making sure those items fit them than a car. Very odd behavior indeed. So if you already have a car that doesn’t fit you this advice is a bit late but you can always in time not make the same mistake again and hopefully can sell your car and get one that does fit. If you haven’t bought your car yet- test drive it. Not just to see that it runs or you feel cool in it- make sure it fits you and will fit your lifestyle and wants.

If you were given a car or same across one through similar means then you really couldn’t test drive it before you acquired it and it probably wasn’t an option to turn it down for another model. That’s understandable. It happens. That said- if you own the car you can sell the car.
I also understand that finances and other things might make that difficult in some cases. If you absolutely can’t sell your car and buy another one, and nothing else has worked or been an option for you- the best you can do is get it as close as possible to optimal as it can be for your situation. Personally I’d advise putting safety and control first and sacrificing comfort if you have to give something up to have the other two. Between safety and control it can be hard to say which should be the priority and there are really two answers but…

.. the truth is that for a skilled driver control is generally paramount. Control IS safety if you know how to control a car. That said- most people would be indignant or argue if told they can’t drive well- but most people can’t. The majority of drivers, especially American drivers, haven’t attended any sort of active safety training and have little to no experience in actually using active safety. The majority of drivers who HAVE done some sort of “safe driving” clinic out the feather in their cap and it’s been a year or decades since they went but they still think they are “above the rest” in skill because of it. If you play a musical instrument or a sport or you work out or dance or paint etc- what happens even if you are good and you don’t use your skills for a long time? They deteriorate. And unless you were very well practiced they vanish almost like you never had them over time unused.

So regardless of your opinion or your “war stories” or how much better than your friends you are or what your dad the race car driver or your uncle the state trooper told you or “showed you”, statistically if you are reading this, you are not a skilled driver most likely. Some of you are. Good for you. Look- ego bruised whatever, get over it let’s move on. You, like 99% of other people, probably aren’t a skilled driver. Even if you have never had an accident or are a “safe” driver, you are not a skilled driver most likely. That means active safety probably isn’t as important for you as passive safety. For most average drivers and for almost all bad drivers it is better to give up a little control for some passive safety.

What does that mean? Your car almost certainly has ABS- antilock brakes. Modern ABS can out brake the most skilled drivers but earlier ABS could not- so why did they put it in so many cars? Well- because while a skilled driver could beat ABS, most drivers aren’t skilled. So they put ABS in cars because that slight loss of control was offset by the fact the average driver didn’t have the skill for it to matter and they were safer with a system that gave up some control but would still do a better job than them. Your car probably has stability control and traction control- same deal. And some might brag their car doesn’t and they do fine- so they must be skilled drivers right? No. Because most people aren’t driving their cars anywhere near the limit, being able to control a car puttering around town or getting a little rowdy is something that is sort of expected of anyone who drives a car no…? It’s at the absolute limit where skill makes the biggest difference- and many will say:

“It’s not a race car and I’m not some ‘boy racer’ so of course I don’t drive around at the limit!” Good. You shouldn’t. Outside a controlled track environment where every step has been taken to make it as safe as possible to drive a car to its limits, the hope would be no one would be pushing the limits of their car- but here’s the thing- unless another car slams into you, if you have a crash or a loss of control- you’ve taken your car past its limits. That’s the intersection between driving skill and safety- active safety- the ability to control a car at the limit and keep it under control. No one can do that 100% of the time because even big race car drivers get in accidents in the race track, but being in active control allows skilled drivers to avoid incidents that less skilled drivers couldn’t regardless of the car they are driving. So if you have to make a choice between optimum control and optimum crash safety- for most drivers on the street you are more likely to…

.. benefit from the passive safety than the active safety because if you find yourself in any serious risk of loss of control where you’d need the extra control to avoid an accident- you probably don’t have the skill to avoid it and would crash anyway, so it’s better to let the car do its best and then be in the position that best protects you WHEN you crash than you try and avoid a crash. In point of fact many crashes occur, and many end up far worse, because someone tried to avoid an accident and made it worse because they didn’t have the skill to control the car or know what they were doing. This is why they generally say to not swerve to avoid an animal in the road- it’s very common that people will swerve into other vehicles or even people or lose control and crash or flip trying to swerve around animals or objects in the road.

Most places will teach you not to try and recover a spin or a slide but to simply “ride it out” by turning into the slide and ceasing acceleration because even pro drivers have trouble with controlled recovery of a spin or slide- it takes a lot of specific training and a certain aptitude and even then it’s probably statistically safer, especially in non controlled conditions like the average road scenario, to ride the slide to a stop than fight it. Tire places will generally place new or deeper tread tires in the rear despite the fronts controlling the cars heading and being the most direct control input for vector- despite the fact most cars on the road drive the front wheels and so benefit from traction to the drive wheels and will tend to wear front tires faster- this is again because the average driver is in much more statistical ranger from a rear end slide than a front end wash out. Most factory passenger vehicles come with understeer bias from the factory largely for this reason

So if you cannot get an ideal or near ideal adjustment through all the methods described, pedal extensions don’t work for your needs, and getting a new car isn’t an option at the moment- get your seating as optimal as you can by finding the seat and control positions that give you that 10” from the wheel while allowing you to see out if the car, then prioritize you ability to interface the controls as optimally as possible, and lastly focus on comfort as the lowest priority because while comfort aids control and endurance in driving and obviously is.. comfortable.. not being dead or smashed into a solid object at high speeds is way more comfortable than being smashed up in a wreck. Let the discomfort be the motivation to do what must be done to hurry and get that new car that fits you properly.