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[-] SomethingBlack@lemmy.world 29 points 1 week ago

Has an "anatomically correct female crash test dummy" actually helped? What even is an "anatomically correct female crash test dummy" and how does it encompass all women's body types in a way that the, assumedly anatomically correct male crash test dummy wouldn't accommodate?

I am absolutely uneducated on this but to my uneducated mind this sounds like getting riled up over a non-issue.

[-] 9point6@lemmy.world 40 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Crash test dummies test the impact of vehicle accidents on human bodies. While more men than women are injured in vehicle accidents, they are more frequently involved in them in the first place. Women are 17% more likely than men to die in the event of a car crash, based on university studies in the US, and 73% more likely to sustain serious injuries in a front-end collision (Invisible Women, p186). In the world of crash test dummies, ‘human body’ has really meant ‘male body’; the first anatomically correct female crash test dummy was only created in 2022.

https://www.theactuary.com/2023/02/02/when-human-isnt-female

Before intervention

17% more dead women than men

73% more injured women than men

When women are in fewer crashes overall

[-] SomethingBlack@lemmy.world 28 points 1 week ago

I appreciate your effort to find that data but it doesn't really address any of my original questions.

Also, from what you've quoted at least, there is no differentiation between drivers vs passengers.

Your data absolutely shows there is a problem, it just doesn't show that the problem is the lack of an "anatomically correct female crash test dummy".

[-] 9point6@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I don't think whether they're driving or not is a meaningful distinction at this level, people should be expected to sit in any of the seats of a car, so I'm making the fairly safe assumption they put dummies in various different seating arrangements.

The stats apparently originate from the US government, so it's going to be a pretty big sample size that should average out any differences in seating position.

I don't think there are really any conclusive after stats as the product was only introduced to the market a couple of years ago, I guess manufacturers need to buy these and then use them in their in-progress designs. Cars on the market that have used these dummies during design are probably only new designs sold in the past year or so.

I also can't seem to find it with a quick search, but I vaguely remember reading about this when it was new a couple of years ago, and there's a correlation with male safety improving with advances in the crash test process that aren't reflected equivalently with women's safety. But maybe take that with a pinch of salt unless you can actually find the source

[-] ByteJunk@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I don't think whether they're driving or not is a meaningful distinction at this level

But it does! For example, if the driver seat offers better protection than the rest of the car, and women are more often than men in one of the other seats, it would explain the results and the dummy doesn't add much.

But if the fatality rate for women in the front passenger seat, for example, is the same as for men in that same seat, that's were probably having an "anatomically correct female crash test dummy" can be very helpful in understanding why these crashes are killing more women than men.

[-] SomethingBlack@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

so I'm making the fairly safe assumption they put dummies in various different seating arrangements

The source doesn't use data from crash test dummies but from real life crashes. So we can't take seating arrangements for granted if it could meaningfully effect the numbers.

The stats apparently originate from the US government, so it's going to be a pretty big sample size that should average out any differences in seating position.

The sample size is irrelevant if cultural factors exist that could skew the results. Cultural factors like men are more commonly taxi/Uber/bus drivers, men are more likely to drive with their partner as a passenger than the inverse, etc.

I don't think there are really any conclusive after stats as the product was only introduced to the market a couple of years ago

That's a fair point, I don't expect there would be enough data for anything conclusive.

there's a correlation with male safety improving with advances in the crash test process that aren't reflected equivalently with women's safety

That would be an interesting read. I'll have a look for it.

[-] theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

One reason male crash test dummies are not representative of female vehicle occupants in an accident is that seatbelts do not sit in the correct position on female bodies, because of their breasts.

This is the only reasoning provided in that entire article

[-] Taalnazi@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Do those also account for pregnant people (masc, fem and enby)?

[-] Taleya@aussie.zone 3 points 1 week ago

First thing that springs to mind is the chest strap on a seatbelt interacting with boobs

[-] AnarchistArtificer@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Previously what was used was a male crash test dummy but sized down. The word "dummy" makes it easy to overlook, but they're pretty technologically impressive bits of kit. They take into account the density of different tissues and their relative distribution in the body, and there are strategically placed sensors to measure the force distribution at different levels. It doesn't encompass all women's body types, in much the same way that the male dummy doesn't encompass all men's body types.

Lots of little differences between male and female bodies cumulatively result in the vehicle collision injury stats that others have quoted elsewhere in this thread. Things like the centre of mass being different, the outline of the pelvis/hips (which also affects the way one sits), women having a greater body fat percentage, that body fat being distributed differently to men's, women have less muscle. Then there's boobs, which aren't just something that can hinder seatbelt placement, but they can also be heavy, and bouncy, which means that the forces involved in a collision can be multiple times more than their weight, which contributes to whiplash and other injuries. On top of this, there's probably a bunch of other factors that we aren't aware of yet, but a more comprehensive testing process could help us to understand what differences between male and female bodies actually matter when it comes to vehicle safety. For example, on average, women tend to have longer hair than men, but I don't expect that would particularly impact injury rate in a vehicle collision. Women having larger breasts than men however, is most certainly a factor that contributed to the stats for women's injury rates being so much higher than men's.

On top of all this, before a dedicated female crash test dummy was designed, the downsized male dummy they were using was laughably small — the male one was designed to be the size of the average man at the time, whereas the downsized male one was so small that it only represented the smallest 5% of women at the time. That just seems absurd to me, but it's what you get when 50% of the population are treated as an afterthought, I suppose.

On the question of does an anatomically correct dummy help, it's a complex question because it takes time for the developments in car safety to actually make it out to the consumer, and even now we have a better crash test dummy for women, some manufacturers have been sluggish in implementing it into their testing — though now at least it's possible to apply pressure and say "hey, why are you not using this in your testing when women are at much higher risk when in one of your cars". Previously, manufacturers who were challenged on this could just shrug and blame the lack of an anatomically correct female crash test dummy, and development of one of those took a lot of time and research expertise, so wasn't something that could be done trivially. Now the resource exists and the industry has less of an excuse.

this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2025
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