11 ms·

A woman is not just 'a smaller male'. Male dummies do not take into account female's different weight distribution, muscle mass etc. This is one of the reasons

A woman is not just 'a smaller male'. Male dummies do not take into account female's different weight distribution, muscle mass etc. This is one of the reasons why women are much more likely than men to die or be seriously injured in a car crash. The book 'Invisible women' by Caroline Criado Perez has a section about this, I highly recommend it.

treis 4y ago
Dummies don't take muscles or weight distribution into account. They're metal skeletons with rubber bodies over them. This is one of those discrimination situations where the truth is actually the exact opposite of what is reported. The dummies tested are 4'11 95 pounds and 5'9" 171 pounds. If the extremes pass then it's likely everyone in between is fine. The people who aren't covered are those above 5'9" or 171 pounds which skews heavily male.
- watwut 4y ago
  The dummy in video seems to be way closer to woman then just size. For example, it has breasts. Those matter for seat belt position. So yeah, it seems that dummy is more then just smaller. But honestly, dont see issue. Men are loosing nothing in this. Male dummies will continue to be used too.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    The dummy's breasts don't seem to move in the video despite the impacts, I think they're probably made out of steel, or a very stiff rubber. I doubt they accurately simulate real breasts, I think they're on the dummy to convey femaleness.
    - watwut 4y ago
      They don't need to move much. The issue I noticed is that when my breasts grew, some safety belts went through throat (previously did not). They push the belt to the side.
      - MichaelCollins 4y ago
        In a collision that rends a metal car frame, I think all flesh would move. Crash test dummies don't simulate this aspect of collisions.
  - NegativeLatency 4y ago
    It’s entirely possible this will make cars safer for everyone
  - Beltalowda 4y ago
    > But honestly, dont see issue. Men are loosing nothing in this. Male dummies will continue to be used too. You're right of course, but I think the deeper issue is that crash dummies and tests are designed just for the "average" and that many people fall outside of this "average". As a 2 metre tall bloke I've sat in many cars where the head rest just doesn't raise high enough for example, which always struck me as a fairly serious but also easily fixable shortcoming. So the thing is that the issue of female crash dummies is a special case of the wider "crash tests should represent a wide range of people". Of course women of various shapes and sizes should be included in that, but also men of various shapes and sizes. By focusing so strongly on only specific groups (women in this case), I think sometimes these larger issues get kind of lost, even though the specific focus isn't really a bad thing in itself. e.g. stuff like "well, we included women now, which is what you wanted, so job done!" ... well, no...
    - magicalist 4y ago
      > By focusing so strongly on only specific groups (women in this case), I think sometimes these larger issues get kind of lost, even though the specific focus isn't really a bad thing in itself You can suggest testing a wider distribution of crash dummy types without also inventing a scenario in which this article somehow prevents that from happening.
    - klipt 4y ago
      It's funny that on average women already live 5 years longer than men, but every "gender equity" initiative seems more interested in increasing that gap than decreasing it.
      - watwut 4y ago
        There are actually people working on various causes of that - attempts to lower incarceration rates, initiatives for safety practices in work help men more then women. Initiatives against smoking and alcoholism make male lifespan larger. Less guns in society would actually lead to less men dead. One problem is that tackling easy causes of male deaths is met with complains about making men softer or feminizing them.
  - treis 4y ago
    As someone 4 inches taller and uh... let's go with significantly heavier than 171 pounds I feel like I'm losing. I certainly wonder what would happen in a crash when I'm riding with my knees jammed against the dashboard. And weight is obviously important and it's rather concerning that I'm stressing the safety system past what it was tested against.
  - adamweld 4y ago
    The existing NHTSA female dummies have breasts as well. See: https://www.nhtsa.gov/nhtsas-crash-test-dummies https://www.nhtsa.gov/nhtsas-crash-test-dummies Presumably the difference here is around weight distribution and other limb length and size proportions. Still I think "First Female Crash Dummy" is a stretch.
jefftk 4y ago
> women are much more likely than men to die or be seriously injured in a car crash I don't think that's right, at least not as stated? Many more men die in car crashes than women: https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/810853 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... Men tend to be in crashes that are more severe than women, though, probably because men are more likely to speed and drive drunk. If you try to look at crashes of equal severity (which is always a bit fraught since you don't have a real control group) then you do see something like what you're describing, though the NHTSA thinks this is mostly due to how robust men vs women are on average and not car design: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811766.PDF http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811766.PDF
- Sakos 4y ago
  The key point is that in the same situation, women are more likely to be injured from what I understand.
  - mathieuh 4y ago
    Maybe they were injured instead of killed?
  - taeric 4y ago
    It does sound somewhat dodgy, though; as it implies they throw out the fatality data. Would love to see the data.
    - Sharlin 4y ago
      More men than women die conditional on being in a crash, because men tend to be involved in more severe crashes. But in crashes "of similar severity" women tend to be more severely injured than men. One confounding variable is the size of the vehicle, but it may be factored into the "similar severity" calculation.
- watwut 4y ago
  Men also drive more. Taxi drivers, truck drives, cops, all those professions are male dominated. And at least where I live, it is man drive family car to work and woman is more likely to go by public transport to work. Man is more likely to be the one to drive when family goes somewhere (and some are quite territorial about it).
hammock 4y ago
What do you suppose is the error introduced by weight distribution differences, as opposed to the dummy being 40lbs (29%) too light?
stickfigure 4y ago
> women are much more likely than men to die or be seriously injured in a car crash Can you cite an academic reference for this? I'm suspicious, but genuinely curious.
- waffleiron 4y ago
  The first two links in the article might be of interest. Not exactly what you asked for but still might satisfy your curiosity. Edit: linked article changed, was referring to: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-first-female-crash-dummy-has-arrived-180981072/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-first-female-c...
  - stickfigure 4y ago
    I only found one link in the article, https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/Publication/811766 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/Publication/8117..., and the abstract begins with: Aging increases a person’s fragility (likelihood of injury given a physical insult) and frailty (chance of dying from a specific injury). Young adult females are more fragile than males of the same age, but later in life women are less frail than their male contemporaries. My impression is that this thread suggests the design of cars has a bias to male safety at the expense of female safety. This link doesn't support that conclusion.
float4 4y ago
> The book 'Invisible women' by Caroline Criado Perez has a section about this, I highly recommend it. I asked for this book for my birthday and read it. However, I couldn't help but notice that when the author wrote about my field (computers, broadly speaking) the research was often... lacking? She wrote a solid 3-4 pages on large phones and it was just surreal to read. Paraphrased: > Phones are very large. This is bad for women; they have smaller hands. Nobody knows why tech companies make large phones. It is very silly, because women actually use their phones more than men. I asked multiple tech journalists for an explanation, they had no idea either. Here I present some theories that can tie this issue to sexism: companies simply design phones with men in mind, companies expect women to carry a handbag all the time so a large phone is no bother, and so on. And sure, women could buy an iPhone SE but that model hasn't been updated in two years. Nothing about better battery life, nothing about better media consumption. It was so confusing, as every tech journalist, literally every tech journalist, knows that bigger phones have better battery life. Sadly it made it a bit difficult for me to fully trust the rest of the book.
- nopenopenopeno 4y ago
  Women are far more likely to have big phones because they are more likely to carry it in a purse. Based on the title alone, I couldn’t take that book seriously.
- plorkyeran 4y ago
  That's also just sort of blatantly incorrect. The early growth in phablet sales that eventually lead to them becoming the normal size for phones was disproportionally in _women_.
  - klipt 4y ago
    That's just standard MO for these think pieces. Anger sells. Corporations: sell things women actually buy. Journalist: why are these corporations so sexist against women? This makes me angry!
- ecshafer 4y ago
  Anecdata but I, a man, prefer small phones that easily fits in my pocket and I can easily use with one hand. But otherwise most women I know have very large phones and when I've asked them, they prefer them. I think one component may be purses, but another is how likely one is to treat their phone as their primary computer.
anikom15 4y ago
Absolute weight is more important in a crash test scenario. If your proportions are correct, but the weight is far off, that’s going to be much worse than having incorrect proportions with the correct weight.

treis 4y ago

Dummies don't take muscles or weight distribution into account. They're metal skeletons with rubber bodies over them. This is one of those discrimination situations where the truth is actually the exact opposite of what is reported. The dummies tested are 4'11 95 pounds and 5'9" 171 pounds. If the extremes pass then it's likely everyone in between is fine. The people who aren't covered are those above 5'9" or 171 pounds which skews heavily male.

watwut 4y ago
The dummy in video seems to be way closer to woman then just size. For example, it has breasts. Those matter for seat belt position. So yeah, it seems that dummy is more then just smaller. But honestly, dont see issue. Men are loosing nothing in this. Male dummies will continue to be used too.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  The dummy's breasts don't seem to move in the video despite the impacts, I think they're probably made out of steel, or a very stiff rubber. I doubt they accurately simulate real breasts, I think they're on the dummy to convey femaleness.
  - watwut 4y ago
    They don't need to move much. The issue I noticed is that when my breasts grew, some safety belts went through throat (previously did not). They push the belt to the side.
    - MichaelCollins 4y ago
      In a collision that rends a metal car frame, I think all flesh would move. Crash test dummies don't simulate this aspect of collisions.
- NegativeLatency 4y ago
  It’s entirely possible this will make cars safer for everyone
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  > But honestly, dont see issue. Men are loosing nothing in this. Male dummies will continue to be used too. You're right of course, but I think the deeper issue is that crash dummies and tests are designed just for the "average" and that many people fall outside of this "average". As a 2 metre tall bloke I've sat in many cars where the head rest just doesn't raise high enough for example, which always struck me as a fairly serious but also easily fixable shortcoming. So the thing is that the issue of female crash dummies is a special case of the wider "crash tests should represent a wide range of people". Of course women of various shapes and sizes should be included in that, but also men of various shapes and sizes. By focusing so strongly on only specific groups (women in this case), I think sometimes these larger issues get kind of lost, even though the specific focus isn't really a bad thing in itself. e.g. stuff like "well, we included women now, which is what you wanted, so job done!" ... well, no...
  - magicalist 4y ago
    > By focusing so strongly on only specific groups (women in this case), I think sometimes these larger issues get kind of lost, even though the specific focus isn't really a bad thing in itself You can suggest testing a wider distribution of crash dummy types without also inventing a scenario in which this article somehow prevents that from happening.
  - klipt 4y ago
    It's funny that on average women already live 5 years longer than men, but every "gender equity" initiative seems more interested in increasing that gap than decreasing it.
    - watwut 4y ago
      There are actually people working on various causes of that - attempts to lower incarceration rates, initiatives for safety practices in work help men more then women. Initiatives against smoking and alcoholism make male lifespan larger. Less guns in society would actually lead to less men dead. One problem is that tackling easy causes of male deaths is met with complains about making men softer or feminizing them.
- treis 4y ago
  As someone 4 inches taller and uh... let's go with significantly heavier than 171 pounds I feel like I'm losing. I certainly wonder what would happen in a crash when I'm riding with my knees jammed against the dashboard. And weight is obviously important and it's rather concerning that I'm stressing the safety system past what it was tested against.
- adamweld 4y ago
  The existing NHTSA female dummies have breasts as well. See: https://www.nhtsa.gov/nhtsas-crash-test-dummies https://www.nhtsa.gov/nhtsas-crash-test-dummies Presumably the difference here is around weight distribution and other limb length and size proportions. Still I think "First Female Crash Dummy" is a stretch.

jefftk 4y ago

> women are much more likely than men to die or be seriously injured in a car crash I don't think that's right, at least not as stated? Many more men die in car crashes than women: https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/810853 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... Men tend to be in crashes that are more severe than women, though, probably because men are more likely to speed and drive drunk. If you try to look at crashes of equal severity (which is always a bit fraught since you don't have a real control group) then you do see something like what you're describing, though the NHTSA thinks this is mostly due to how robust men vs women are on average and not car design: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811766.PDF http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811766.PDF

Sakos 4y ago
The key point is that in the same situation, women are more likely to be injured from what I understand.
- mathieuh 4y ago
  Maybe they were injured instead of killed?
- taeric 4y ago
  It does sound somewhat dodgy, though; as it implies they throw out the fatality data. Would love to see the data.
  - Sharlin 4y ago
    More men than women die conditional on being in a crash, because men tend to be involved in more severe crashes. But in crashes "of similar severity" women tend to be more severely injured than men. One confounding variable is the size of the vehicle, but it may be factored into the "similar severity" calculation.
watwut 4y ago
Men also drive more. Taxi drivers, truck drives, cops, all those professions are male dominated. And at least where I live, it is man drive family car to work and woman is more likely to go by public transport to work. Man is more likely to be the one to drive when family goes somewhere (and some are quite territorial about it).

hammock 4y ago

What do you suppose is the error introduced by weight distribution differences, as opposed to the dummy being 40lbs (29%) too light?

stickfigure 4y ago

> women are much more likely than men to die or be seriously injured in a car crash Can you cite an academic reference for this? I'm suspicious, but genuinely curious.

waffleiron 4y ago
The first two links in the article might be of interest. Not exactly what you asked for but still might satisfy your curiosity. Edit: linked article changed, was referring to: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-first-female-crash-dummy-has-arrived-180981072/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-first-female-c...
- stickfigure 4y ago
  I only found one link in the article, https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/Publication/811766 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/Publication/8117..., and the abstract begins with: Aging increases a person’s fragility (likelihood of injury given a physical insult) and frailty (chance of dying from a specific injury). Young adult females are more fragile than males of the same age, but later in life women are less frail than their male contemporaries. My impression is that this thread suggests the design of cars has a bias to male safety at the expense of female safety. This link doesn't support that conclusion.

float4 4y ago

> The book 'Invisible women' by Caroline Criado Perez has a section about this, I highly recommend it. I asked for this book for my birthday and read it. However, I couldn't help but notice that when the author wrote about my field (computers, broadly speaking) the research was often... lacking? She wrote a solid 3-4 pages on large phones and it was just surreal to read. Paraphrased: > Phones are very large. This is bad for women; they have smaller hands. Nobody knows why tech companies make large phones. It is very silly, because women actually use their phones more than men. I asked multiple tech journalists for an explanation, they had no idea either. Here I present some theories that can tie this issue to sexism: companies simply design phones with men in mind, companies expect women to carry a handbag all the time so a large phone is no bother, and so on. And sure, women could buy an iPhone SE but that model hasn't been updated in two years. Nothing about better battery life, nothing about better media consumption. It was so confusing, as every tech journalist, literally every tech journalist, knows that bigger phones have better battery life. Sadly it made it a bit difficult for me to fully trust the rest of the book.

nopenopenopeno 4y ago
Women are far more likely to have big phones because they are more likely to carry it in a purse. Based on the title alone, I couldn’t take that book seriously.
plorkyeran 4y ago
That's also just sort of blatantly incorrect. The early growth in phablet sales that eventually lead to them becoming the normal size for phones was disproportionally in _women_.
- klipt 4y ago
  That's just standard MO for these think pieces. Anger sells. Corporations: sell things women actually buy. Journalist: why are these corporations so sexist against women? This makes me angry!
ecshafer 4y ago
Anecdata but I, a man, prefer small phones that easily fits in my pocket and I can easily use with one hand. But otherwise most women I know have very large phones and when I've asked them, they prefer them. I think one component may be purses, but another is how likely one is to treat their phone as their primary computer.

anikom15 4y ago

Absolute weight is more important in a crash test scenario. If your proportions are correct, but the weight is far off, that’s going to be much worse than having incorrect proportions with the correct weight.