Vehicle occupant crash safety: Injury data, crash testing and the world’s first crash test dummy of an average female

0579946 - SOÚ 2024 eng U - Conference, Workshop Arrangement
Nebeská, Ananké - Langhammerová, Gabriela - Linder, A.
Vehicle occupant crash safety: Injury data, crash testing and the world’s first crash test dummy of an average female.
[online, 28.11.2023-28.11.2023, (W-WRD 38/15)]
R&D Projects: GA MŠMT MS2103
Institutional support: RVO:68378025
Keywords : gender dimension * transportation safety * crash testing
OECD category: Sociology

On our roads 1.35 million people lose their lives yearly and, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), in the order of 20-50 million are injured – some of which become permanently disabled. Real-world injury data shows that cars provide different levels of protection for women compared to men in the event of a crash. The largest difference has been shown for soft tissue neck injuries, the so-called whiplash injuries, which are injuries that can cause lifelong disabilities. On average, females have double the risk of sustaining these injuries compared to males.
When we assess the safety of the occupants in a vehicle the average male is the norm. In crash testing the occupant is represented by a crash test dummy and so far, no crash test dummy of an average female is required to be used in any testing nor available from any dummy manufacturer. The law in Europe, the Treaty of the Union, requires that women and men shall be addressed equally, yet the global regulation (UNCEC) that is used in Europe requires a model of the average male to be used as the driver in all tests, full stop. The first crash test dummy of an average male, as we know him today with some updates, was designed over 50 years ago. And we have just very recently started designing the model representing the average female.
The lecture will contain details of what is described above and a description of real-world data showing different levels of crash protection for females and males. I will also present the background and development of the world’s firsts crash test dummy of an average female, the Seat Evaluation Tool (SET) 50F and the equivalent average male, the SET 50M. Furthermore, the validation of the models is described and recent tests with different car seats are used as illustration of what can be identified from crash tests when both a model of the female and male part of the population is used.


Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0348743