A Swedish engineer and researcher is working to create the first ever female crash test dummy representative of an average size woman. Dr. Astrid Linder is leading a team that’s aiming to break the “bias” that has existed against women in safety testing for years, per the BBC. It sounds like they’re doing incredible work!
- Generally speaking, crash test dummies have always been male. Every test has been done on a dummy with typical male build and weight. When attempting to determine the efficacy of a product for women, some companies have swapped out the standard dummy for a smaller male version, which is about the size of a 12-year-old girl. In other words, it’s not ideal.
- The new female crash test dummy represents the average size woman. The dummy is 5 feet, 3 inches tall and weighs 136 pounds. By contrast, the child-sized dummy previously used when testing for women was only 4 feet, 8 inches tall and weighed 106 pounds.
- Why hasn’t this happened sooner? Inherent misogyny, of course. Men in the auto industry are self-referential and don’t consider women in their decision-making. “You can see that this is a bias. When all the men in the meetings decide, they tend to look to their feet and say ‘this is it,'” said European safety specialist at Toyota, Tjark Kreuzinger. “I would never say that anybody does it intentionally but it’s just the mere fact that it’s typically a male decision – and that’s why we do not have [average] female dummies.”
- Women are way more likely to experience injuries in a car crash than men. Not surprising, given that safety features are tailored toward male drivers and passengers. U.S. government data suggests that women are three times as likely to get whiplash in rear impact accidents, for instance.
- The statistics were behind the Swedish team’s decision to start changing the industry. “We know from injury statistics that if we look at low severity impacts females are at higher risk,” said Linder, the director of traffic safety at the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute. “So, in order to ensure that you identify the seats that have the best protection for both parts of the population, we definitely need to have the part of the population at highest risk represented.”
