Women More Likely To Get Whiplash Than Men In A Car Crash

For the longest time,car crash testshave used dummies based on the average size of a man. Dr. Astrid Linder from Sweden discerned the gender bias that could be a safety concern for the opposite sex - which eventually led her to the creation of her female dummy model based on the average size of a woman.

Last May 2023, the Swedish engineer won the Woman of Worth (WOW) award from the Women's Car of the Year for designing and instigating the world'sfirst-ever female crash test dummy.

Dr. Linder suggests that women are put at greater risk in the event of a car accident, and are particularly vulnerable to whiplash. She sat down with the Women's World Car of the Year to talk about how the project came to be and the challenges in accomplishing such an award-winning feat.

Linder, a professor of traffic safety at the VTI, started working with crash test dummies as a Ph.D. student at Chalmers University in Sweden in the 90s. She got the idea to create a female dummy after finding out women were at higher risk of sustaining whiplash injuries than men.

Geometry, weight, and height are the factors that differentiate a female from a male dummy. These include shoulder width and center of gravity of the torso - which are higher for men.Volvo did various safety testsincluding with a pregnant model to see how fetuses were protected. However, a study on the protection of women was never conducted.

The goal of the project is to identify better safety innovations not only for men but for the entire population. Her work has been around for more than 20 years now.

The lack of funding is the biggest challenge for Linder and the team. In 2012, Volvo, Chalmers, and partners from Europe produced a mathematical dummy of an average woman. After this, such initiatives were believed to be "too difficult and expensive."