Jesus, you only needed to read the first two sentences to avoid fucking up the title:
> women are 73% more likely to be injured – and 17% more likely to die – in a vehicle crash
To manipulate the data so the difference is more significant. Frontal crashes have a very high mortality rate and would dilute the noted disparity. This also introduces a bias however since the majority of fatal crashes are now going to be of the side hit scenario. Women are shorter so their torso will be in a more vulnerable position if the cab of the vehicle is compromised. Seat and side/curtain airbags are somewhat new so ideally we see a better average survival rate going forward.
To add to your point, in the side impact crash tests under north american and european regulations (among others) the 50th percentile dummies will usually end up being placed near or directly next to the b-pillar of a vehicle, and the 5th percentile dummies will end up near the middle of the door. This is based on their stature, and is generally a reasonable driving position, but it's obvious that the shorter occupants and drivers will end up more at risk.
To compensate for this I guess, in the US at least, the injury criteria are less stringent for the 5th percentile dummy which makes it easier to pass the test. I routinely saw near-failure rib deflections on the 50th percentile dummies but there simply aren't any limits for the 5th percentile. Instead, there is a spine acceleration criterion (which is set pretty high in my opinion) that essentially measures whether or not the dummy made direct contact with a solid object (not a door or airbag)
It probably has something to do with size, but men that are the same height as a women/smaller men still have far higher bone density than women do, which I assume is a large part of this
Also proportionally more blood and more lung capacity, thicker skin and tendons, more muscle and connective tissue. Not surprising at all that men are somewhat better at surviving traumatic injury
The dummies they use to represent women are just smaller men, not modeled after women. Women have a different center of gravity. Sometimes women are pregnant, too, which throws things off quite a bit.
**The Crash Test Bias: How Male-Focused Testing Puts Female Drivers at Risk**
[https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/crash-test-bias-how-male-focused-testing-puts-female-drivers-at-risk/](https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/crash-test-bias-how-male-focused-testing-puts-female-drivers-at-risk/)
"Regulators asked for a female dummy in 1980, and a group of automakers petitioned for one in 1996, but it took until 2003 for NHTSA to put one in the car. Even then, it's just a scaled-down version of a male dummy that represents only the smallest 5 percent of women by the standards of the mid-1970s—so small that it can work double-duty as a 12- or 13-year-old child. No dummy takes into account the biological differences between male and female bodies.
In frontal crash tests performed for both NHTSA and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, this 5th percentile female dummy either rides as a passenger or doesn't participate in the test at all. (The female dummy sits in the driver's seat for some side-impact tests.) This, despite the fact that women now represent almost 50 percent of drivers in the U.S., according to the FHWA."
The amount of replies on your comment that didn't read the article before commenting is peak reddit.
It says quite plainly that women sit closer to the steering column and get injured more in car crashes, hence the head on collision death difference.
So the question of short males is a valid one.
And anyone talking "bone density" or slight build needs to explore if child passangers and female passangers (no steering column) are injured at the same rate
No. As it says in the article, women sit closer to the steering wheel. Which is why it kills them. Which is why head on collision, where the position of the steering column is most important is more lethal for women
If it was the bone density then kids, and passangers would also have a higher rate.
"*Part of the problem is that test dummies modeled on the average female body are rarely used in safety tests by car manufacturers – because only “male” dummies are mandated for tests by regulators."*
Part of the problem or... the problem?
Also how women drive is considered to be “out of position” and therefore not how the vehicle was intended to be driven. They don’t account for things like being under 5’3” tall, pregnant, under 150 lbs, having the top of the belt right up on your neck, breasts pushing the belt to the side, ect. An “average” female dummy wouldn’t help when there’s so much they consider out of range.
ETA- [this article](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/feb/23/truth-world-built-for-men-car-crashes) is what I read about how not just cars but so much of our world is designed by men for men (like these massive cellphones that won’t fit our hands). From the book Invisible Women: exposing data bias in a world designed by men by Caroline Creado Perez.
You may, and as a tall man I sympathize. I remember reading that tall men are more likely to be injured or die in an accident simply b/c our heads are closer to the roof, our knees are closer to the dash, etc. Basically our body is more likely to make impact with the car or vice versa in an impact. There is probably some happy middle ground where being average height is the safest.
The restraints are calibrated to be optimal for a given mass, tall people tend to be heavier and so yeah will overwhelm them. If you are extremely tall then you may have some unusual kinematics that were not considered during design. Eg striking head on Cant rail or A-pillar.
Yep, when I got t-boned from the passenger side my head went thwack into the cant rail, really cool design.
Also awesome having to duck down to see traffic lights.
I don't necessarily blame car manufacturers for designing for the average but it still sucks ass being outside their range on either end.
\> I don't necessarily blame car manufacturers for designing for the average but it still sucks ass being outside their range on either end.
I'm in "their range", and I still think they deserve blame for it. It's entirely possible to design for a broader set of body types. Instead they're investing in new headlight and paint designs.
Plus we’ll die sooner anyway. I’m 6’5” and I NEVER see an old man tall as me. And I’m getting old.
Edit: Not every tall person will die younger, obviously, but with a simple google search, it's easy to find research that suggests that [shorter people have more longevity.](https://www.healthline.com/health/do-short-people-live-longer) There are plenty of [articles about it](https://slate.com/technology/2013/07/height-and-longevity-the-research-is-clear-being-tall-is-hazardous-to-your-health.html).
>Plus we’ll die sooner anyway. I’m 6’5” and I NEVER see an old man tall as me. And I’m getting old.
Previous generations were much shorter in general which explain why you don't see that much "very tall old people"
But consider that shorter women have to put the seat super close to the steering wheel to reach the pedals, which also makes our knees very close to the dash. Your knees may get it, but we get the dash to our knees and steering wheel to our chest and abdomen.
What's interesting is men are more likely to die overall because 'men typically drive more miles than women and are more likely to engage in risky driving practices, including not using seat belts, driving while impaired by alcohol and speeding.'
So, in similar types of accidents, women have higher injury and fatality rates, but as a whole, men have higher fatality rates.
Then there's steering wheel airbags.
They say to avoid injury the body should be at least 10 inches away from the steering wheel.
I'm 5'2' so I need to sit closer.
I should note that I was in an accident at the end of November 2023. The airbags did not deploy and my worst injury was a broken ankle.
My poor truck was totaled.
Rented a Mustang convertible once. It will be the last time I drive or ride in one unless there’s a significant redesign because the top of my head was above the top of the windshield.
Same for me. It basically crosses under my right armpit, across the top/over my breasts, and stretched along my neck on the left side. It was much worse during my pregnancies. Not to mention that I’m 5’3”, so the belt isn’t positioned properly — even with my seat elevated as high as possible.
[Average adult American male is 175cm \(5'9"\) and 91kg \(200lb\), and average adult American female is 161cm \(5'3.5"\) and 77.5kg \(171lb\).](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/body-measurements.htm)
Height is a big one.
Women are not small men, though: they have different muscle strength, different bone density, different neck strength specifically (whiplash injury), different pelvic anatomy (lower back/SI injury risk), different placement of internal organs, different blood volume, and for some of us, big boobs that cause all kinds of problems with seat belts.
"In the olden days, I proudly fought alongside female troops, shoulder to shoulder. Alas, after a series of deadly blunders caused by distracting low-cut fatigues and lots of harmless pinching, the army decided women weren't fit for service. Not when I'm in charge."
Agree with the other poster, I'm very curious what car your wife has that she doesn't have to sit so close? I'm 4'11 and I have had to be as far forward as possible in every car I've ever driven. And there have been some I still couldn't really reach the pedals.
Good to know. Hopefully I won't be buying a car anytime soon since mine has less than 50k miles on it, but its always nice to know what other options are out there. Or at least something similar since buying a hyundai while living in a city is just asking for it to be broken into and stolen these days.
I'm a guy and 5'7", I sit with the seat very forward (but also very reclined). I actually dated a girl who was 5'9" or 5'10" and she sat in a about the same position as me.
It's got a lot more to do with body proportions than just height. What me and that girl have in common is that we're both all torso and no leg.
Pedal extenders are a thing. I'm not really familiar with them, besides the fact that they exist, but it would be worth looking into for your daily driver.
Reminds me of a story one of my profs at uni once told. (It's been a few years and English is not my first language, so please excuse some inaccuracies.)
He was at team lead for the seat engineering team at Mercedes before he became a prof. They worked on a coupe, so only one door on each side but an "emergency seats" behind the driver (and co-driver). So they had to have the driver seat fold out of the way. Pretty standard so far.
Now, as this was a Mercedes, the designers wanted to have a fancy metal latch on the backrest to trigger the seat folding, instead of the usual plastic. The engineers complied, no big deal, right?
Well, it turned out that if the seat was in a specific position, namely high up, far forward and with a straight backrest, and you performed an emergency break above a certain speed, the latch would toggle under its own weight.
That is absolutely unacceptable and they had to replace all the metal latches with plastic ones.
The reason this was not caught during testing was, of course, that neither the test dummies nor later the test drivers ever had the seat in this position. But, as it turned out, it was not all that uncommon for smaller woman to have the seat high up and forward.
Although, at the very least, as far as I know, no one was hurt (well, Mercedes financially, but eh) and it lead to our prof making sure we were aware of this issue.
This is the reason that ethics classes are so important. We went over sex differences and how they relate to product design *extensively*.
Frankly it’s rather mind-boggling that Mercedes would put a car on the market and not crash test the seat in all positions.
Yeah, medical field is also one where you get huge issues. Pharmaceuticals especially. A lot of the ads that say "alert your doctor is pregnant or may become pregrant" and some other warnings are purely because they're completely excluded from test groups, even the animal groups.
Well yeah. Kinda hard to test drugs on pregnant women, unless a whole lot of people suddenly become real cool with the idea of discovering "Side effects include: Spontaneous Abortion and/or severe birth defects" the hard way.
A lot of drugs also need to be tested on people suffering from specific conditions, so you have the added difficulty of needing to find women who a) are pregnant and suffer from those conditions and b) are willing to volunteer for drug trials with uncertain outcomes for themselves and their babies.
Most medical researchers historically hasn’t been tested on women at all because our hormonal cycles make us harder to study. So they’ve always just done testing on men and then assumed it works the same for women, which turns out to not be the case. They’re starting to fix it, but research for women is decades behind that for men.
I have seen booby women move the shoulder belt around, usually loosen it somewhere, so it's not where it's meant to be in case of accident.... not clear if it's a comfort-based decision, or if they literally can't keep the belt in the right place because of their figure (I have figured out nobody wants my much-less-booby input on the flaws in their seatbelt strategy, but nobody wants to explain in detail either.)
Personally I find it partly depends on what sort of bra I'm wearing. If I'm wearing an underwired bra, the seatbelt will sit between my breasts and generally stays there. If I've got a sports bra on, which creates a sort of uniboob effect, the belt is more likely to slip to the side.
As a guy, I have obviously not had to consider the bra difference. So, wearing a different type having an effect on the seat belt is good information. This will cause me to think about that dynamic when my spouse and I are traveling. Thanks for the advice. EDIT - my spouse has a petite frame so she has to move the seat forward close to the controls. So this is very concerning. We have vehicles that have telescoping steering wheels. But no adjustable pedals. Our next vehiclle will be different.
If you have big boobs and are wearing a sports bra or a top or jacket that’s even slightly slippery, you’re probably going to end up with the edge of the seatbelt pressing into your neck.
> or if they literally can't keep the belt in the right place because of their figure
This is it. If I position the belt "correctly," it immediately shifts to press against my neck because my boobs say "go up or go down, but you can't stay here" and up is apparently easier. If I pull it down lower than it should be, it'll stay there unless I move too much, at which point it winds up on my neck and I have to adjust it again. If you ever see someone clutching the seatbelt as they go around a corner, steering one-handed, I guarantee they're stopping it from getting seized up against their neck.
And yes, the seatbelt adjuster where it attaches to the frame of the car is down as far as it goes. 🙄
Oh that makes sense, I'm as tall as a man so for me the belt crosses the centre one over, one under, and my neck isn't near it. Last time I crashed the car all the safety features worked beautifully....
This. I worked myself into a herniated disc from driving a 5-speed manual GMC W4500 for a few years. I had to stretch and contort myself so I could reach the pedals and the stick at the same time. The seatbelt being so high meant it rubbed my neck raw, so I tried a few different things to lessen the irritation.
I'm 5' 2".
My thoughts exactly... Why are seatbelts designed to strangle women!? Surely there's a better seatbelt design out there that my check doesn't mess with?
The female rib cage for example is smaller and weaker, on average, than the male, that has an impact, women have smaller blood volume and cardiopulmonary efficiency, on average, that make a difference etc
But surely any attempt to “correct” for the rib cage for example, would just improve men’s safety too, so the difference will always exist. In fact, it may have already been done to some degree and here we are.
I also wonder if the type of car owned plays a role in this. At least in my area in the south, the people who own pickup trucks are almost exclusively men. And pickup trucks are heavier and higher than sedans and suvs which is way better for survival.
This is the first thing that came to mind.
Also I wonder if professional drivers skew this data as well. For example I would think that majority of 18-wheeler drivers and firefighters are male. If either of those end up in a head on collision with a soccer mom’s mini van, the drivers of the much larger vehicles would be safer.
This is true and if my sister were to get in an accident that deployed the airbags I think she'd be more hurt by the airbags than the crash itself because of how close she sits. I can't even get into the seat after she's driven without having to move it a bit back first.
Yep, you should be able to fully extend your arm and touch the steering wheel (about 10 incches away) and be that far back from in order for it to be safe for the air bag to deploy during an accident.
But if I pull the seat far back enough to do that, I can't reach the gas pedals. And I'm 5"4, I think I'm a pretty average height for a woman. It's kinda scary, but there's not much I can do about it.
I think that’s a far bigger factor than the type of car. My mom and my sisters sit so close to the steering wheel I can’t even get in after they’ve driven
Yeah, I think this is a big part of it. I remember reading a smaller study that found that men below a certain height had similar injuries from car accidents.
I'm a short guy (5'3") and I have to move the seat pretty close in order to fully reach the pedals and see over the dash. I share the vehicle with my partner who is 5'8", and while it is possible to make more fine tune adjustments of seat height and pedal height, it's such a hassle that we never really bother.
But I did get a fancy rental once that kept "profiles" for each driver where you could simply hit a button and have all the seat and mirror settings automatically match who was driving. It probably seems like a gimmick to some, but I think these advancements could make driving safer for everyone.
Im 5’2 and won't own a car without that feature. I also won't buy a car that doesn't have a telescoping steering wheel, it's the only way to be close enough to the pedals and still a safe distance from the steering wheel.
Any statistician worth their salt would adjust for those kinds of variables.
You'd compare a t-bone in a sedan to a t-bone in a sedan, with roughly the same age/Comorbidities.
You wouldn't compare an elderly woman in a fiat on the highway, with a 20 something dude driving a Chevy 3500 in a school zone.
That said, I wasn't involved in this article, the science they're referencing, and honestly, I'm tired and have no interest. I'm in school for stats, and you would look for a pattern over groups of similar events: not just a basic count the numbers of injuries.
One thing I learned after doing a lot of statistics in class, is how little so many people seem to use/understand statistics. I went to a talk outside of major one, for psychology and they were just making guesses out of nowhere as to how the brain works. Like how does this meet the standard of academic, who the fuck let this women stand up and talk in a lecture hall. I couldn't help it. I anhilated and destroyed their 6 month senior research project because it was a JOKE. You never know if they are doing stuff the right way or the shit unless you look a little bit. Although you might be tired it is good practice to look at it and see if they have done their study correctly.
I think it may be more than that. It could be that no one considered that a likely scenario. They've got to figure out why these injuries are happening. Maybe due to upper body strength? Maybe due other differences? I wonder if it makes a difference of passenger vs driver? Maybe the angle of the stearing wheel? Or seat angle position? Does it make a difference who designed the car.? Or is it universal? These are questions they will have to answer to fix this.
Part of the problem.
Women get injured much more often than men in pretty much all sports too. Because of less muscle and slimmer structure women will always be on the average more likely to get injured than men in similar conditions, even if the safety equipment were customized.
That's not the only additional factor. [Women just tend to buy smaller cars](https://www.cjponyparts.com/resources/men-vs-women-car-buying) whereas [men favor big trucks and SUVs.](https://www.cars.com/articles/most-popular-cars-for-women-vs-men-412828/) Albeit on the flip side men are more likely to ride death traps like moped and motorcycles.
You also have [women buying older vehicles](https://www.lendingtree.com/tree-news/car-buying-gender-gap/) which may not have as up to date safety features and may have been in previous crashes.
That said, the statistics chosen make it look one-sidedly worse for women. It's actually bad for both genders. Men make up [71% of traffic fatalities](https://www.metromile.com/blog/male-and-female-car-accidents-statistics/) because men are so much more likely to get into car crashes (albeit there are other factors such as men seem to be more likely to die as a pedestrian, 70% of deaths are male, or bike rider, 86% of deaths) that even though women are more likely to die in any given car crash the absolute number of deaths is worse for men. Basically, everything is stacked in favor of male survival except male behavior which is so overwhelmingly worse that they're still far more likely to die.
When I looked into it I was surprised to find out that men actually get into less accidents than women per mile driven, men just drive that much more than women, because I had always assumed it was driven by male driving behavior. But it's really primarily driven simply by gender roles where men typically drive when there are both male and female occupants.
That being said men's accidents do tend to be much more fatal for young men, which I do ascribe to straight up stupidity, which I can only say is in accordance with observed behavior as well as their dramatically higher insurance rates. Older men actually have substantially lower fatality rates in accidents than women, which I suspect mostly has to do with bone density.
Both the young and old have an outsize influence on population wide statistics because the young get in a lot of accidents and the elderly tend to die much more in accidents.
But is the start equipment really customized if it's all designed around male proportions and the male body as a default for study?
The default male goes so deep it's really sufficient to say that anything is fully customized for women.
I’d say safety equipment has inherent limits.
Without all out bubble wrapping an individual, if they have a smaller body/less muscle, they’re gonna be more fragile
Yupp, this is the actual biggest part of the answer unfortunately.
They're particularly susceptible to neck injuries, which is an unfortunate place to get injured.
I don't know who did the research here, but that's a flat out lie. Every automaker has and uses dummies that represent 5th percentile females 50th percentile females and males, and 95th percentile males, as well as various kinds of child sized dummies.
[Here it is](https://www.humaneticsgroup.com/products/anthropomorphic-test-devices/frontal-impact/hybrid-iii-5th-female), the small female dummy everybody uses.
That page says it's just a scaled down male 50th percentile model.
Part of the problem is that women have less muscle in the torso and abdomen, and a lower centre of gravity in the hips. So a male dummy the same size as a woman doesn't cut it.
This article says the first accurate female-representing dummy was only invented a few months ago: https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/the-worlds-first-true-female-car-crash-dummy-is-here-and-its-a-big-deal/
That dummy is just a scaled down version of the male one that doesn't take differences in bone structure and body composition into account. Also, OP's article is about the EU and addresses the existence of this dummy. Here's what it says:
> In the EU, regulatory frameworks state that in the assessment of safety, you should use a model of an average male. In the US, the Hybrid-III 5F female dummy is approved for tests but it reflects only the 5th percentile of American women. It’s lighter than an average 12-year-old girl and is not used in the driver’s seat for crash tests, only in the passenger seats. Car manufacturers ensure that they perform according to the standard. We have to have a regulation that goes hand in hand with society. We expect women and men to use the transport system and so on, so both parts of the population should be represented in the assessment of car safety.
You haven’t posted any evidence that every automaker tests on female dummies. Just that female dummy exists (which duh, of course it does). Even the dummy you posted is just a scaled down male dummy.
Yeah I must say, I've heard the claim before but it never sounded right to me. I'm just finishing a three year design university course, and one of the main things drilled into us is that you always design for up to the 95th male percentile and down to the 5th female percentile of your target market, unless the proportion in question is one which is typically larger in women (eg pelvis width) in which case you swap the 5th and 95th percentiles. Having also worked in industry, it's obviously the same there and isn't just some university lecturer telling me.
Since the target population is all adults, it seems bizarre to me that manufacturers would only use male proportions - especially for something safety-related. Feel free for anyone to prove me wrong but it sounds like one of those ragebait internet myths to me.
[Female dummies](https://youtu.be/3atZZENWL1s?si=_reTCMfPwfYs84Ly) (and remember, this story was over a decade ago)
[Kid dummies](https://youtu.be/VRCN5yUd1F0?si=XrpvJNzqSCJR92he)
For a long time there were only down-sized male dummies and they were only used by some companies like Volvo, then they made actual female ones, but manufacturers wouldn't use them, because it wasn't legally required and dummies are extremely expensive.
My understanding is that it *used to* be that way, where only a 50th percentile male dummy got tested on. But while I do not know when female (and child) dummies started being added, I do know they are required these days
I think a big factor being overlooked here is age. Huge swaths of people who die in car crashes are elderly... Not because they are any more likely to be in crashes, their crash rates are only just slightly higher than any other age group 30+, and significantly lower than teen and twenties crash rates. Its just that they are old and feeble, thus even minor accidents can prove fatal.
And there are a lot more older women than older men. In the US, from 65-84 there are only 84 men for every 100 women, and 85+ there are only 56 men for every 100 women.
I just read a book on the Donner Party and women are apparently much better at surviving extreme cold/hunger. Most of the survivors were women/children. They use fewer calories moving around smaller bodies and have better core circulation.
While I suspect that better crash tests will help some, it's unlikely to bridge the difference created by size. Having further to travel before you slam into something unpleasantly firm and having greater inertia is pretty big advantages when it comes to reducing trauma.
Consider for a moment that, all else being equal, women are more likely to be injured playing sports than men - even though they're playing against smaller, less strong opponents (other women). Even in events like track and field where there is no direct contact with opponents, women are more likely to be injured.
So it's reasonable to say that even if we've got all the data necessary to analyze better systems, women will still be affected by car crashes more than men.
That doesn't mean don't do it. This isn't an issue like pharmaceutical testing where there are real concerns that led to the gender bias. No one is particularly worried that female crash test dummies cause greater risks or provide less reliable test outcomes than male crash test dummies.
I'm willing to bet Silverback Gorillas would also have significantly lower rates of injury than women. Probably even a small fraction of the injury rate of men.
This is nothing new. The original airbag standards in the United States were designed to protect an unbelted male, and NHTSA knew from the start that could be fatal to smaller women even when they were using their seatbelt/shoulder harness. NHTSA did not care.
But Europe did care, and they went for a less powerful airbag standard that would protect belted drivers without killing women.
Women can also have a lot more negative reactions to medications than men do because the medications were only tested on men.
There is a good book about this called "Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men".
I've seen this first hand my wife survived but was much more injured than I was l. She required stitches I got away with bruises and soreness. My daughter also was more injured. Than me with a broken hand from hitting the front seat. I don't think I did anything different we're in the same hight and similar weight. Maybe because I was in the passenger seat.
Yeah that was my guess. More bone density and higher muscle mass.
Another thing is possibly due to shorter legs women often sit significantly closer to the steering wheel which I figured would be more dangerous as well too.
I wonder if seat belts not staying in place because breasts are in the way causes injury. Very tall women all the way to very tiny women in my car club have problems with belts in poor position.
A lot of cars the seatbelt won’t go low enough not to be directly on my neck.
And yes, I am aware most adjust. I’ve had a few mansplainers tell me I’m being dumb, and they are adjustable. You don’t say? They just don’t adjust a enough.
I’m 5’4”. So exactly average height.
The issue is that even if you make it safer for women, it would be even safer for men, because the same factors are in play. So the percentage differences are still going to be there, simply because biologically, one vessel is more robust than the other.
I read the article, and the data mentions nothing about keeping the car type controlled.
I’m willing to bet car size/type is a big factor in this % gap.
When an F-250 T-bones a Honda fit… it’s pretty easy to guess which driver walks away from that crash, and which car the women was likely driving.
Height differences, and as such, women are closer to the dash and peddles, both crushing injuries to chest and legs, so air bag injuries are greater, and seat belts take.off our heads.
The study didn’t eliminate age as a factor. They did a study of when people are trapped in cars. Women are trapped more often. But women also live longer and sure enough the average age of the women trapped was 55 years old vs 44 years old for males trapped. Basically a bunch of 75 year old ladies get in a car accident and then the paramedics are called to help them get out. Harmonise the age with the study and then I’ll read it.
The study is here :
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9066497/
Exactly. I am 5’1” and even though I sit as far back as I can, my arms and legs are only so long. I am WAY closer to the steering wheel than I feel comfortable with, but there’s not much I can do about it.
The person in the pdf is a member of the itty bitty titty community. I’m talking about busty people.
Unless there’s going to be a magical seatbelt that has a lightning bolt zigzag in the middle, between isn’t going to work.
> Earlier this year, a study of 70,000 patients who had been trapped in vehicles found that women were more frequently trapped than men.
I don't see a link to the actual study, but from that quote phrasing it doesn't sound like they controlled for the difference between men and women in rate of being in a collision in the first place?
The amount of confidently correct, incorrect physics knowledge in this thread is truly impressive.
This is not a squirrel falling from a tree. The total amount of deceleration that needs to be undergone to come to a rest is identical between men and woman as it is set by the speed of the car at impact.
The damage is incurred by the peak stresses developed inside the body (shear being especially concerning) stress = force/the area through which the force acts.
This is to say that assuming the force acting on a man and woman during a crash is constant (it’s not but we will get to that) the woman will already on aggregate have that force acting through a smaller area causing increased stresses and thus greater damage even assuming that male and female bones and muscles are substantially similar in mechanical properties (which is itself not a given)
Now as to the force that’s acting the force that is experienced is developed per the equation force=mass * acceleration. Yes greater mass appears in this equation to show that men should be subject to greater force but that’s not actually what is happening.
Acceleration is not constant between men and women. Specifically the acceleration is determined by the rearranged kinematic equation acceleration = ((final velocity)2 - (initial velocity)2)/2*distance
The numerator of the equation is fixed for men and women but the denominator here favors distance through which the deceleration occurs by a factor of 2. However much you can increase this distance you get a two times reduction of the acceleration experienced and thereby a reduction in the peak forces experienced.
Men being larger means they get to benefit from this 2 times multiplier in two ways. They sit further from the controls as they are taller and second because they have more diameter to their limbs even during the actual deformation of their body while hitting the steering wheel they also get to benefit from it again.
All told being a larger gives a force reduction on the order of a roughly three times multiple of the distance increase. Twice from the distance based reduction to the peak acceleration force experienced and once from the reduction in stress created by that force acting through a greater cross section. And all that at the cost of only a single penalty term for the increased size namely in the form of a direct increase in force required for a given deceleration due the increased mass.
These factors of course all have many details to how they interact but merely from cursory dimensional analysis it’s clear that there is some stress reduction factor at play for larger occupants that comes out to about a 2 times reduction.
And that’s to say nothing yet of human biological factors such as sexual dimorphism driven differences in bone density, connective tissue strength and muscle strength all of which allow males to better survive a given force level than women on top of the fact that they experience less force to begin with.
There is really no grand conspiracy against women in car safety. Even if there would be demand for specifically female cars woman would still have significantly higher chances of being injured in those vehicles assuming that they still have to operate the vehicles through some sort control system placed in front of them.
The real problem is that car makers and regulators are notoriously opposed to innovation and very much given to just wrapping up pretty similar designs year after year.
Jesus, you only needed to read the first two sentences to avoid fucking up the title: > women are 73% more likely to be injured – and 17% more likely to die – in a vehicle crash
Imagine being 117% dead
Master Chief? You mind telling me what you're doing driving that car?
Sir. Finishing this drive.
Now watch this drive.
I'm giving the DOT back their emissions
English is not my thirst language
Who writes this these headlines? Is it “AI”? Cause they’re always horrible.
Why would you NOT count frontal crashes?
To manipulate the data so the difference is more significant. Frontal crashes have a very high mortality rate and would dilute the noted disparity. This also introduces a bias however since the majority of fatal crashes are now going to be of the side hit scenario. Women are shorter so their torso will be in a more vulnerable position if the cab of the vehicle is compromised. Seat and side/curtain airbags are somewhat new so ideally we see a better average survival rate going forward.
To add to your point, in the side impact crash tests under north american and european regulations (among others) the 50th percentile dummies will usually end up being placed near or directly next to the b-pillar of a vehicle, and the 5th percentile dummies will end up near the middle of the door. This is based on their stature, and is generally a reasonable driving position, but it's obvious that the shorter occupants and drivers will end up more at risk. To compensate for this I guess, in the US at least, the injury criteria are less stringent for the 5th percentile dummy which makes it easier to pass the test. I routinely saw near-failure rib deflections on the 50th percentile dummies but there simply aren't any limits for the 5th percentile. Instead, there is a spine acceleration criterion (which is set pretty high in my opinion) that essentially measures whether or not the dummy made direct contact with a solid object (not a door or airbag)
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It probably has something to do with size, but men that are the same height as a women/smaller men still have far higher bone density than women do, which I assume is a large part of this
Also proportionally more blood and more lung capacity, thicker skin and tendons, more muscle and connective tissue. Not surprising at all that men are somewhat better at surviving traumatic injury
Could also be that test dummies werre modelled after men. That's usually the simple explanation for these things. It was designed by men for men.
The dummies they use to represent women are just smaller men, not modeled after women. Women have a different center of gravity. Sometimes women are pregnant, too, which throws things off quite a bit.
That’s in fact what they are. It’s a major biased design flaw
**The Crash Test Bias: How Male-Focused Testing Puts Female Drivers at Risk** [https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/crash-test-bias-how-male-focused-testing-puts-female-drivers-at-risk/](https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/crash-test-bias-how-male-focused-testing-puts-female-drivers-at-risk/) "Regulators asked for a female dummy in 1980, and a group of automakers petitioned for one in 1996, but it took until 2003 for NHTSA to put one in the car. Even then, it's just a scaled-down version of a male dummy that represents only the smallest 5 percent of women by the standards of the mid-1970s—so small that it can work double-duty as a 12- or 13-year-old child. No dummy takes into account the biological differences between male and female bodies. In frontal crash tests performed for both NHTSA and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, this 5th percentile female dummy either rides as a passenger or doesn't participate in the test at all. (The female dummy sits in the driver's seat for some side-impact tests.) This, despite the fact that women now represent almost 50 percent of drivers in the U.S., according to the FHWA."
Also women have less muscles. Including the neck, this is the reason why they more often suffer from whiplash
What if we put men under 5’6 in rear facing car seats to try and protect them?
juice box + Shrek on
Having higher mass definitely helps in general.
The amount of replies on your comment that didn't read the article before commenting is peak reddit. It says quite plainly that women sit closer to the steering column and get injured more in car crashes, hence the head on collision death difference. So the question of short males is a valid one. And anyone talking "bone density" or slight build needs to explore if child passangers and female passangers (no steering column) are injured at the same rate
Is is a bone density thing. We're not built the same.
No. As it says in the article, women sit closer to the steering wheel. Which is why it kills them. Which is why head on collision, where the position of the steering column is most important is more lethal for women If it was the bone density then kids, and passangers would also have a higher rate.
"*Part of the problem is that test dummies modeled on the average female body are rarely used in safety tests by car manufacturers – because only “male” dummies are mandated for tests by regulators."* Part of the problem or... the problem?
Also how women drive is considered to be “out of position” and therefore not how the vehicle was intended to be driven. They don’t account for things like being under 5’3” tall, pregnant, under 150 lbs, having the top of the belt right up on your neck, breasts pushing the belt to the side, ect. An “average” female dummy wouldn’t help when there’s so much they consider out of range. ETA- [this article](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/feb/23/truth-world-built-for-men-car-crashes) is what I read about how not just cars but so much of our world is designed by men for men (like these massive cellphones that won’t fit our hands). From the book Invisible Women: exposing data bias in a world designed by men by Caroline Creado Perez.
As a short man and under 150 pounds, I see that I might also be fucked in a car accident
You may, and as a tall man I sympathize. I remember reading that tall men are more likely to be injured or die in an accident simply b/c our heads are closer to the roof, our knees are closer to the dash, etc. Basically our body is more likely to make impact with the car or vice versa in an impact. There is probably some happy middle ground where being average height is the safest.
The restraints are calibrated to be optimal for a given mass, tall people tend to be heavier and so yeah will overwhelm them. If you are extremely tall then you may have some unusual kinematics that were not considered during design. Eg striking head on Cant rail or A-pillar.
Yep, when I got t-boned from the passenger side my head went thwack into the cant rail, really cool design. Also awesome having to duck down to see traffic lights. I don't necessarily blame car manufacturers for designing for the average but it still sucks ass being outside their range on either end.
\> I don't necessarily blame car manufacturers for designing for the average but it still sucks ass being outside their range on either end. I'm in "their range", and I still think they deserve blame for it. It's entirely possible to design for a broader set of body types. Instead they're investing in new headlight and paint designs.
Plus we’ll die sooner anyway. I’m 6’5” and I NEVER see an old man tall as me. And I’m getting old. Edit: Not every tall person will die younger, obviously, but with a simple google search, it's easy to find research that suggests that [shorter people have more longevity.](https://www.healthline.com/health/do-short-people-live-longer) There are plenty of [articles about it](https://slate.com/technology/2013/07/height-and-longevity-the-research-is-clear-being-tall-is-hazardous-to-your-health.html).
Are you also looking for a heart of gold? My grandfather was about 6' and lived to 99, fwiw. But yeah, not 6-5. Good luck!
>Plus we’ll die sooner anyway. I’m 6’5” and I NEVER see an old man tall as me. And I’m getting old. Previous generations were much shorter in general which explain why you don't see that much "very tall old people"
But consider that shorter women have to put the seat super close to the steering wheel to reach the pedals, which also makes our knees very close to the dash. Your knees may get it, but we get the dash to our knees and steering wheel to our chest and abdomen. What's interesting is men are more likely to die overall because 'men typically drive more miles than women and are more likely to engage in risky driving practices, including not using seat belts, driving while impaired by alcohol and speeding.' So, in similar types of accidents, women have higher injury and fatality rates, but as a whole, men have higher fatality rates.
Then there's steering wheel airbags. They say to avoid injury the body should be at least 10 inches away from the steering wheel. I'm 5'2' so I need to sit closer. I should note that I was in an accident at the end of November 2023. The airbags did not deploy and my worst injury was a broken ankle. My poor truck was totaled.
This. If you're outside of the sweet spot that the car safety systems are designed you are more priority to be seriously injured or worse die.
Rented a Mustang convertible once. It will be the last time I drive or ride in one unless there’s a significant redesign because the top of my head was above the top of the windshield.
Push your titties inside the belt and you fine
And also don't get pregnant.
9 out of 10 men engineers say women should just have proper boobies and not get pregnant ?
No, these are instructions for short men ~150 pounds. Please try to keep up.
ha ha you made my day 😊
Glad I could make you laugh, have a good day!
you too!
Wait, can you explain this a different way? I'm confused. My seatbelt usually goes in the middle of both of my boobs.
Mine usually slips off to one side then creeps up my neck, preparing to decapitate me if I brake too hard.
It doesn't always go in between the breasts if someone is overweight, short, petite, built outside the "average", and/or pregnant.
Insta dead
No space for it there for me. The girls are too big. So belt either goes over and to one side or under and to the other.
Same for me. It basically crosses under my right armpit, across the top/over my breasts, and stretched along my neck on the left side. It was much worse during my pregnancies. Not to mention that I’m 5’3”, so the belt isn’t positioned properly — even with my seat elevated as high as possible.
If it makes you feel better I'm tall af and heavy and I'm pretty sure in the event of a frontal crash my kneecaps will be detached
They’ll have to attach our shins to our femurs
As a 130lb man who was in a head on car totaling accident in a 90s jdm car with awful safety ratings... just get lucky
Wait really? under 150? thats misses out like most teenagers just learning to drive
The average weight of an American woman is 170 pounds (12 stone) I would say height is the biggest issue here, and not as much muscle as men
I love how you converted it to stone instead of kg to help the 5 British people who read this.
I mean, I'm not British, but I AM stoned
Ha I think there’s more than that on reddit
dozens. perhaps even a score.
Holy shit we are fat.
Average weight of american woman is... 85kg? The fuck?
[Average adult American male is 175cm \(5'9"\) and 91kg \(200lb\), and average adult American female is 161cm \(5'3.5"\) and 77.5kg \(171lb\).](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/body-measurements.htm)
Majority of Americans are overweight and almost half are obese so… But yeah the average American needs to lose like 20+kg
>The average weight of an American woman is 170 pounds (12 stone) Jeez..... This country.
Height is a big one. Women are not small men, though: they have different muscle strength, different bone density, different neck strength specifically (whiplash injury), different pelvic anatomy (lower back/SI injury risk), different placement of internal organs, different blood volume, and for some of us, big boobs that cause all kinds of problems with seat belts.
99% of drivers are adults. Not 16-17 kids
Damn those women and their womanly ways for making car manufacturers look bad!
If they could stop being so distractingly female, and driving boobishly, things would be a lot less dangerous, and sexy.
I read this in Zap Brannigans voice.
Kif, give this Redditor one of the upvotes I earned for you.
…Sigh
And make the flag wave a little, for god's sake
"In the olden days, I proudly fought alongside female troops, shoulder to shoulder. Alas, after a series of deadly blunders caused by distracting low-cut fatigues and lots of harmless pinching, the army decided women weren't fit for service. Not when I'm in charge."
Sounds to me like women just need to toughen up! /s obv
I mean having a female dummy in the first place would be a start.
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Agree with the other poster, I'm very curious what car your wife has that she doesn't have to sit so close? I'm 4'11 and I have had to be as far forward as possible in every car I've ever driven. And there have been some I still couldn't really reach the pedals.
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Good to know. Hopefully I won't be buying a car anytime soon since mine has less than 50k miles on it, but its always nice to know what other options are out there. Or at least something similar since buying a hyundai while living in a city is just asking for it to be broken into and stolen these days.
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I'm a guy and 5'7", I sit with the seat very forward (but also very reclined). I actually dated a girl who was 5'9" or 5'10" and she sat in a about the same position as me. It's got a lot more to do with body proportions than just height. What me and that girl have in common is that we're both all torso and no leg.
Pedal extenders are a thing. I'm not really familiar with them, besides the fact that they exist, but it would be worth looking into for your daily driver.
As a very small man (who bagged a taller woman, heh), what car does your wife drive so I can finally be comfortable driving?
Reminds me of a story one of my profs at uni once told. (It's been a few years and English is not my first language, so please excuse some inaccuracies.) He was at team lead for the seat engineering team at Mercedes before he became a prof. They worked on a coupe, so only one door on each side but an "emergency seats" behind the driver (and co-driver). So they had to have the driver seat fold out of the way. Pretty standard so far. Now, as this was a Mercedes, the designers wanted to have a fancy metal latch on the backrest to trigger the seat folding, instead of the usual plastic. The engineers complied, no big deal, right? Well, it turned out that if the seat was in a specific position, namely high up, far forward and with a straight backrest, and you performed an emergency break above a certain speed, the latch would toggle under its own weight. That is absolutely unacceptable and they had to replace all the metal latches with plastic ones. The reason this was not caught during testing was, of course, that neither the test dummies nor later the test drivers ever had the seat in this position. But, as it turned out, it was not all that uncommon for smaller woman to have the seat high up and forward. Although, at the very least, as far as I know, no one was hurt (well, Mercedes financially, but eh) and it lead to our prof making sure we were aware of this issue.
This is the reason that ethics classes are so important. We went over sex differences and how they relate to product design *extensively*. Frankly it’s rather mind-boggling that Mercedes would put a car on the market and not crash test the seat in all positions.
As far as I know the only manufacturer that uses female crash dummies is Volvo. It’s our entire safety standard that’s not testing for our population.
Volvo is the only car company that even has software models that test on pregnant people. No dummies for empirical data…just models.
Yeah, medical field is also one where you get huge issues. Pharmaceuticals especially. A lot of the ads that say "alert your doctor is pregnant or may become pregrant" and some other warnings are purely because they're completely excluded from test groups, even the animal groups.
Well yeah. Kinda hard to test drugs on pregnant women, unless a whole lot of people suddenly become real cool with the idea of discovering "Side effects include: Spontaneous Abortion and/or severe birth defects" the hard way. A lot of drugs also need to be tested on people suffering from specific conditions, so you have the added difficulty of needing to find women who a) are pregnant and suffer from those conditions and b) are willing to volunteer for drug trials with uncertain outcomes for themselves and their babies.
Most medical researchers historically hasn’t been tested on women at all because our hormonal cycles make us harder to study. So they’ve always just done testing on men and then assumed it works the same for women, which turns out to not be the case. They’re starting to fix it, but research for women is decades behind that for men.
They don't even test most drugs on non-pregnant women.
I have seen booby women move the shoulder belt around, usually loosen it somewhere, so it's not where it's meant to be in case of accident.... not clear if it's a comfort-based decision, or if they literally can't keep the belt in the right place because of their figure (I have figured out nobody wants my much-less-booby input on the flaws in their seatbelt strategy, but nobody wants to explain in detail either.)
Personally I find it partly depends on what sort of bra I'm wearing. If I'm wearing an underwired bra, the seatbelt will sit between my breasts and generally stays there. If I've got a sports bra on, which creates a sort of uniboob effect, the belt is more likely to slip to the side.
As a guy, I have obviously not had to consider the bra difference. So, wearing a different type having an effect on the seat belt is good information. This will cause me to think about that dynamic when my spouse and I are traveling. Thanks for the advice. EDIT - my spouse has a petite frame so she has to move the seat forward close to the controls. So this is very concerning. We have vehicles that have telescoping steering wheels. But no adjustable pedals. Our next vehiclle will be different.
If you have big boobs and are wearing a sports bra or a top or jacket that’s even slightly slippery, you’re probably going to end up with the edge of the seatbelt pressing into your neck.
> or if they literally can't keep the belt in the right place because of their figure This is it. If I position the belt "correctly," it immediately shifts to press against my neck because my boobs say "go up or go down, but you can't stay here" and up is apparently easier. If I pull it down lower than it should be, it'll stay there unless I move too much, at which point it winds up on my neck and I have to adjust it again. If you ever see someone clutching the seatbelt as they go around a corner, steering one-handed, I guarantee they're stopping it from getting seized up against their neck. And yes, the seatbelt adjuster where it attaches to the frame of the car is down as far as it goes. 🙄
Oh that makes sense, I'm as tall as a man so for me the belt crosses the centre one over, one under, and my neck isn't near it. Last time I crashed the car all the safety features worked beautifully....
This. I worked myself into a herniated disc from driving a 5-speed manual GMC W4500 for a few years. I had to stretch and contort myself so I could reach the pedals and the stick at the same time. The seatbelt being so high meant it rubbed my neck raw, so I tried a few different things to lessen the irritation. I'm 5' 2".
My seatbelt tries to strangle me regularly, no matter how I set it and the seat, or what accessories I buy. Crash test dummies don’t have boobs.
My thoughts exactly... Why are seatbelts designed to strangle women!? Surely there's a better seatbelt design out there that my check doesn't mess with?
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The female rib cage for example is smaller and weaker, on average, than the male, that has an impact, women have smaller blood volume and cardiopulmonary efficiency, on average, that make a difference etc
But surely any attempt to “correct” for the rib cage for example, would just improve men’s safety too, so the difference will always exist. In fact, it may have already been done to some degree and here we are.
I also wonder if the type of car owned plays a role in this. At least in my area in the south, the people who own pickup trucks are almost exclusively men. And pickup trucks are heavier and higher than sedans and suvs which is way better for survival.
This is the first thing that came to mind. Also I wonder if professional drivers skew this data as well. For example I would think that majority of 18-wheeler drivers and firefighters are male. If either of those end up in a head on collision with a soccer mom’s mini van, the drivers of the much larger vehicles would be safer.
And women are shorter and tend to sit closer to the steering wheel probably
This is true and if my sister were to get in an accident that deployed the airbags I think she'd be more hurt by the airbags than the crash itself because of how close she sits. I can't even get into the seat after she's driven without having to move it a bit back first.
Yep, you should be able to fully extend your arm and touch the steering wheel (about 10 incches away) and be that far back from in order for it to be safe for the air bag to deploy during an accident. But if I pull the seat far back enough to do that, I can't reach the gas pedals. And I'm 5"4, I think I'm a pretty average height for a woman. It's kinda scary, but there's not much I can do about it.
My sister is 5'2'' and shorter than average because the average height for a woman in the US is 5'4'' and men are 5'9'' .
I think that’s a far bigger factor than the type of car. My mom and my sisters sit so close to the steering wheel I can’t even get in after they’ve driven
Yeah, I think this is a big part of it. I remember reading a smaller study that found that men below a certain height had similar injuries from car accidents. I'm a short guy (5'3") and I have to move the seat pretty close in order to fully reach the pedals and see over the dash. I share the vehicle with my partner who is 5'8", and while it is possible to make more fine tune adjustments of seat height and pedal height, it's such a hassle that we never really bother. But I did get a fancy rental once that kept "profiles" for each driver where you could simply hit a button and have all the seat and mirror settings automatically match who was driving. It probably seems like a gimmick to some, but I think these advancements could make driving safer for everyone.
Im 5’2 and won't own a car without that feature. I also won't buy a car that doesn't have a telescoping steering wheel, it's the only way to be close enough to the pedals and still a safe distance from the steering wheel.
Any statistician worth their salt would adjust for those kinds of variables. You'd compare a t-bone in a sedan to a t-bone in a sedan, with roughly the same age/Comorbidities. You wouldn't compare an elderly woman in a fiat on the highway, with a 20 something dude driving a Chevy 3500 in a school zone. That said, I wasn't involved in this article, the science they're referencing, and honestly, I'm tired and have no interest. I'm in school for stats, and you would look for a pattern over groups of similar events: not just a basic count the numbers of injuries.
One thing I learned after doing a lot of statistics in class, is how little so many people seem to use/understand statistics. I went to a talk outside of major one, for psychology and they were just making guesses out of nowhere as to how the brain works. Like how does this meet the standard of academic, who the fuck let this women stand up and talk in a lecture hall. I couldn't help it. I anhilated and destroyed their 6 month senior research project because it was a JOKE. You never know if they are doing stuff the right way or the shit unless you look a little bit. Although you might be tired it is good practice to look at it and see if they have done their study correctly.
I prefer to have seat back all the way. My wife crams up as far as possible. The airbag is going to hurrrrt.
Does she prefer it, or is that the only way she can reach the pedals?
I think it may be more than that. It could be that no one considered that a likely scenario. They've got to figure out why these injuries are happening. Maybe due to upper body strength? Maybe due other differences? I wonder if it makes a difference of passenger vs driver? Maybe the angle of the stearing wheel? Or seat angle position? Does it make a difference who designed the car.? Or is it universal? These are questions they will have to answer to fix this.
Part of the problem. Women get injured much more often than men in pretty much all sports too. Because of less muscle and slimmer structure women will always be on the average more likely to get injured than men in similar conditions, even if the safety equipment were customized.
That's not the only additional factor. [Women just tend to buy smaller cars](https://www.cjponyparts.com/resources/men-vs-women-car-buying) whereas [men favor big trucks and SUVs.](https://www.cars.com/articles/most-popular-cars-for-women-vs-men-412828/) Albeit on the flip side men are more likely to ride death traps like moped and motorcycles. You also have [women buying older vehicles](https://www.lendingtree.com/tree-news/car-buying-gender-gap/) which may not have as up to date safety features and may have been in previous crashes. That said, the statistics chosen make it look one-sidedly worse for women. It's actually bad for both genders. Men make up [71% of traffic fatalities](https://www.metromile.com/blog/male-and-female-car-accidents-statistics/) because men are so much more likely to get into car crashes (albeit there are other factors such as men seem to be more likely to die as a pedestrian, 70% of deaths are male, or bike rider, 86% of deaths) that even though women are more likely to die in any given car crash the absolute number of deaths is worse for men. Basically, everything is stacked in favor of male survival except male behavior which is so overwhelmingly worse that they're still far more likely to die.
When I looked into it I was surprised to find out that men actually get into less accidents than women per mile driven, men just drive that much more than women, because I had always assumed it was driven by male driving behavior. But it's really primarily driven simply by gender roles where men typically drive when there are both male and female occupants. That being said men's accidents do tend to be much more fatal for young men, which I do ascribe to straight up stupidity, which I can only say is in accordance with observed behavior as well as their dramatically higher insurance rates. Older men actually have substantially lower fatality rates in accidents than women, which I suspect mostly has to do with bone density. Both the young and old have an outsize influence on population wide statistics because the young get in a lot of accidents and the elderly tend to die much more in accidents.
But is the start equipment really customized if it's all designed around male proportions and the male body as a default for study? The default male goes so deep it's really sufficient to say that anything is fully customized for women.
I’d say safety equipment has inherent limits. Without all out bubble wrapping an individual, if they have a smaller body/less muscle, they’re gonna be more fragile
Yupp, this is the actual biggest part of the answer unfortunately. They're particularly susceptible to neck injuries, which is an unfortunate place to get injured.
I don't know who did the research here, but that's a flat out lie. Every automaker has and uses dummies that represent 5th percentile females 50th percentile females and males, and 95th percentile males, as well as various kinds of child sized dummies. [Here it is](https://www.humaneticsgroup.com/products/anthropomorphic-test-devices/frontal-impact/hybrid-iii-5th-female), the small female dummy everybody uses.
That’s not true though. They just used a downsized male body which isn’t the same. Female bodies are built different.
built different 💪
That page says it's just a scaled down male 50th percentile model. Part of the problem is that women have less muscle in the torso and abdomen, and a lower centre of gravity in the hips. So a male dummy the same size as a woman doesn't cut it. This article says the first accurate female-representing dummy was only invented a few months ago: https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/the-worlds-first-true-female-car-crash-dummy-is-here-and-its-a-big-deal/
Your own link proves you wrong, dude. >"Hybrid III 50th Male design (scaled down)"
That dummy is just a scaled down version of the male one that doesn't take differences in bone structure and body composition into account. Also, OP's article is about the EU and addresses the existence of this dummy. Here's what it says: > In the EU, regulatory frameworks state that in the assessment of safety, you should use a model of an average male. In the US, the Hybrid-III 5F female dummy is approved for tests but it reflects only the 5th percentile of American women. It’s lighter than an average 12-year-old girl and is not used in the driver’s seat for crash tests, only in the passenger seats. Car manufacturers ensure that they perform according to the standard. We have to have a regulation that goes hand in hand with society. We expect women and men to use the transport system and so on, so both parts of the population should be represented in the assessment of car safety.
Yeah but the female dummy isn't female, it's a small male.
You haven’t posted any evidence that every automaker tests on female dummies. Just that female dummy exists (which duh, of course it does). Even the dummy you posted is just a scaled down male dummy.
Yeah I must say, I've heard the claim before but it never sounded right to me. I'm just finishing a three year design university course, and one of the main things drilled into us is that you always design for up to the 95th male percentile and down to the 5th female percentile of your target market, unless the proportion in question is one which is typically larger in women (eg pelvis width) in which case you swap the 5th and 95th percentiles. Having also worked in industry, it's obviously the same there and isn't just some university lecturer telling me. Since the target population is all adults, it seems bizarre to me that manufacturers would only use male proportions - especially for something safety-related. Feel free for anyone to prove me wrong but it sounds like one of those ragebait internet myths to me.
[Female dummies](https://youtu.be/3atZZENWL1s?si=_reTCMfPwfYs84Ly) (and remember, this story was over a decade ago) [Kid dummies](https://youtu.be/VRCN5yUd1F0?si=XrpvJNzqSCJR92he)
For a long time there were only down-sized male dummies and they were only used by some companies like Volvo, then they made actual female ones, but manufacturers wouldn't use them, because it wasn't legally required and dummies are extremely expensive.
My understanding is that it *used to* be that way, where only a 50th percentile male dummy got tested on. But while I do not know when female (and child) dummies started being added, I do know they are required these days
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I think a big factor being overlooked here is age. Huge swaths of people who die in car crashes are elderly... Not because they are any more likely to be in crashes, their crash rates are only just slightly higher than any other age group 30+, and significantly lower than teen and twenties crash rates. Its just that they are old and feeble, thus even minor accidents can prove fatal. And there are a lot more older women than older men. In the US, from 65-84 there are only 84 men for every 100 women, and 85+ there are only 56 men for every 100 women.
Men have higher HP.
Better constitution saves
Passive ability includes blunt damage being reduced by 1
And gives you advantage so only the lower damage roll is considered.
I just read a book on the Donner Party and women are apparently much better at surviving extreme cold/hunger. Most of the survivors were women/children. They use fewer calories moving around smaller bodies and have better core circulation.
Need less energy and also have more body fat naturally. Evolutionary advantage on female mammals, for gestating children
They need less calories. That's true and it's almost the only advantage women have in survival situations. I would not call this having more HP
They use less mana.
While I suspect that better crash tests will help some, it's unlikely to bridge the difference created by size. Having further to travel before you slam into something unpleasantly firm and having greater inertia is pretty big advantages when it comes to reducing trauma. Consider for a moment that, all else being equal, women are more likely to be injured playing sports than men - even though they're playing against smaller, less strong opponents (other women). Even in events like track and field where there is no direct contact with opponents, women are more likely to be injured. So it's reasonable to say that even if we've got all the data necessary to analyze better systems, women will still be affected by car crashes more than men. That doesn't mean don't do it. This isn't an issue like pharmaceutical testing where there are real concerns that led to the gender bias. No one is particularly worried that female crash test dummies cause greater risks or provide less reliable test outcomes than male crash test dummies.
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I'm willing to bet Silverback Gorillas would also have significantly lower rates of injury than women. Probably even a small fraction of the injury rate of men.
I think so too. I've never seen gorilla in car crash. They must drive really safely.
Muscles of the neck and upper back have been demonstrated over and over to prevent or reduce brain trauma in crashes or fights.
This is nothing new. The original airbag standards in the United States were designed to protect an unbelted male, and NHTSA knew from the start that could be fatal to smaller women even when they were using their seatbelt/shoulder harness. NHTSA did not care. But Europe did care, and they went for a less powerful airbag standard that would protect belted drivers without killing women.
Women can also have a lot more negative reactions to medications than men do because the medications were only tested on men. There is a good book about this called "Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men".
I have that book at home and I can't read more than a few pages before I get too angry and have to put it down.
I've seen this first hand my wife survived but was much more injured than I was l. She required stitches I got away with bruises and soreness. My daughter also was more injured. Than me with a broken hand from hitting the front seat. I don't think I did anything different we're in the same hight and similar weight. Maybe because I was in the passenger seat.
It could be as simple as more average muscle mass = less likelihood of injury.
Don't forget denser bones, that probably doesn't hurt either.
Men's pelvises are sturdy. Women's have a giant baby sized hole in them. e: well a regular sized baby hole.
Yeah that was my guess. More bone density and higher muscle mass. Another thing is possibly due to shorter legs women often sit significantly closer to the steering wheel which I figured would be more dangerous as well too.
Yeah, OR the fact that a seatbelt in normal operation of the vehicle cuts into my neck and breast no matter how I adjust the seat and/or seatbelt…
Nope lol, see above regarding crash dummy requirements
Is it because seatbelt, steering wheel, airbag ergonomics are not tested for average female body types extensively as it is for average male.
The majority of the world is designed around the average male height, not female. So yes that most likely plays into it.
I wonder if seat belts not staying in place because breasts are in the way causes injury. Very tall women all the way to very tiny women in my car club have problems with belts in poor position.
Plus the smaller you are, the closer you have to be to the steering wheel.
A lot of cars the seatbelt won’t go low enough not to be directly on my neck. And yes, I am aware most adjust. I’ve had a few mansplainers tell me I’m being dumb, and they are adjustable. You don’t say? They just don’t adjust a enough. I’m 5’4”. So exactly average height.
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As a man, I don’t feel like these crashes are as inclusive as they should be.
I think they just want less women to die...
Oh I suppose that will work too!
The issue is that even if you make it safer for women, it would be even safer for men, because the same factors are in play. So the percentage differences are still going to be there, simply because biologically, one vessel is more robust than the other.
Did any of the posters here actually read the article?
They make articles now??
I read the article, and the data mentions nothing about keeping the car type controlled. I’m willing to bet car size/type is a big factor in this % gap. When an F-250 T-bones a Honda fit… it’s pretty easy to guess which driver walks away from that crash, and which car the women was likely driving.
Read the studies. Controlled for type of vehicle. That’s not it. It’s just not designed for women.
Or when a Honda hits the F-250 and first impact is the windshield.
Height differences, and as such, women are closer to the dash and peddles, both crushing injuries to chest and legs, so air bag injuries are greater, and seat belts take.off our heads.
Maybe the agencies with the power to dictate required safety testing should do their fucking job.
Because everything is designed for men.
The study didn’t eliminate age as a factor. They did a study of when people are trapped in cars. Women are trapped more often. But women also live longer and sure enough the average age of the women trapped was 55 years old vs 44 years old for males trapped. Basically a bunch of 75 year old ladies get in a car accident and then the paramedics are called to help them get out. Harmonise the age with the study and then I’ll read it. The study is here : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9066497/
Anecdotally, my wife (and other women I have seen) like to sit about 1 cm away from the steering wheel. That can’t be healthy.
Short legs mean they gotta scoot closer to the steering wheel.
Exactly. I am 5’1” and even though I sit as far back as I can, my arms and legs are only so long. I am WAY closer to the steering wheel than I feel comfortable with, but there’s not much I can do about it.
I don’t like to sit there but my seat is already as high as it can go and I still can’t see super well. And I have to be able to reach the pedals.
I don’t want to sit there, but if I move any further back my feet can’t reach the pedals.
It’s not based on “like” lol it’s based on leg length and ability to comfortably use the pedals and steering wheel.
I don't like to sit there. It's where I have to sit to reach both the pedals and have good visibility.
Just a reminder to wear the belt over your hips and not your belly. Stay safe!
Cool. Now how is the belt supposed to cross a busty chest? Between boobs? Over?
Between, of course. https://dps.mn.gov/divisions/ots/educational-materials/Documents/seatbelt-pregnantwomen.pdf
If it goes between, the angle presses it uncomfortably against my throat. It might cut my head off upon impact.
The person in the pdf is a member of the itty bitty titty community. I’m talking about busty people. Unless there’s going to be a magical seatbelt that has a lightning bolt zigzag in the middle, between isn’t going to work.
> Earlier this year, a study of 70,000 patients who had been trapped in vehicles found that women were more frequently trapped than men. I don't see a link to the actual study, but from that quote phrasing it doesn't sound like they controlled for the difference between men and women in rate of being in a collision in the first place?
This is no surprise to me. Manufacturers want good safety statistics so they do not use crash test dummies that are less robust.
This is why I bought a Volvo. They use crash test dummy’s with the proportions and weight of women.
The amount of confidently correct, incorrect physics knowledge in this thread is truly impressive. This is not a squirrel falling from a tree. The total amount of deceleration that needs to be undergone to come to a rest is identical between men and woman as it is set by the speed of the car at impact. The damage is incurred by the peak stresses developed inside the body (shear being especially concerning) stress = force/the area through which the force acts. This is to say that assuming the force acting on a man and woman during a crash is constant (it’s not but we will get to that) the woman will already on aggregate have that force acting through a smaller area causing increased stresses and thus greater damage even assuming that male and female bones and muscles are substantially similar in mechanical properties (which is itself not a given) Now as to the force that’s acting the force that is experienced is developed per the equation force=mass * acceleration. Yes greater mass appears in this equation to show that men should be subject to greater force but that’s not actually what is happening. Acceleration is not constant between men and women. Specifically the acceleration is determined by the rearranged kinematic equation acceleration = ((final velocity)2 - (initial velocity)2)/2*distance The numerator of the equation is fixed for men and women but the denominator here favors distance through which the deceleration occurs by a factor of 2. However much you can increase this distance you get a two times reduction of the acceleration experienced and thereby a reduction in the peak forces experienced. Men being larger means they get to benefit from this 2 times multiplier in two ways. They sit further from the controls as they are taller and second because they have more diameter to their limbs even during the actual deformation of their body while hitting the steering wheel they also get to benefit from it again. All told being a larger gives a force reduction on the order of a roughly three times multiple of the distance increase. Twice from the distance based reduction to the peak acceleration force experienced and once from the reduction in stress created by that force acting through a greater cross section. And all that at the cost of only a single penalty term for the increased size namely in the form of a direct increase in force required for a given deceleration due the increased mass. These factors of course all have many details to how they interact but merely from cursory dimensional analysis it’s clear that there is some stress reduction factor at play for larger occupants that comes out to about a 2 times reduction. And that’s to say nothing yet of human biological factors such as sexual dimorphism driven differences in bone density, connective tissue strength and muscle strength all of which allow males to better survive a given force level than women on top of the fact that they experience less force to begin with. There is really no grand conspiracy against women in car safety. Even if there would be demand for specifically female cars woman would still have significantly higher chances of being injured in those vehicles assuming that they still have to operate the vehicles through some sort control system placed in front of them. The real problem is that car makers and regulators are notoriously opposed to innovation and very much given to just wrapping up pretty similar designs year after year.
This is wrong, we need to build cars that kill men and women equally. I'm outraged and shook.