Written by / Zhu Lin
Editor/ Zhang Linyu
Design / Shi Yuchao
Source/NewYorkTimes, by Alisha Haridasani Gupta
Today, in the U.S., if a woman sits in the driver's seat of most cars, she is 73 percent more likely to be seriously injured and 17 percent more likely to die in a car accident than a male driver. Older adults, heavier adults and children are also at higher risk of death and injury than young and middle-aged men weighing around 170 pounds (about 77 kg).
The data isn't new: Lawmakers, automakers, safety advocates, and researchers knew about the differences at least 10 years ago. In 2013, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) analyzed 50 years of crash data to come to these conclusions.
These safety gaps are largely related to "vehicle design and technology," the report said. In other words, many cars are less safe for women and people of a certain size and age because that's how they are built.
However, designers and researchers are trying to leverage cutting-edge technology to create a more standardized safety bottom line for future car designs.
Dr Lotta Jakobsson, Volvo's senior technical expert in injury prevention, said: "The research at this stage is mainly about the diversity of human body shapes. ”
The advent of safety devices
In the 1960s and 1970s, it became mandatory to install safety devices on cars, much to the chagrin of most automakers. Henry Ford II, the chief executive of the Ford Motor Company, despised the concept of airbags so much that he decorated his office with several cushions embroidered with curses embroidered next to the words "airbags."
Until then, most cars had little protection for drivers and passengers: without seat belts and airbags, the steering wheel could puncture the driver; fragile doors could open suddenly in a collision; and simple braking systems made it difficult for drivers to safely avoid a crash. As a result, between 1965 and 1973, about 50,000 people died in car accidents each year.
In November 1965, activist and lawyer Ralph Nader published Unsafe at Any Speed: The Design-In Danger of the American Automobile.
The book is groundbreaking in exposing facts such as how automakers have ignored the warnings of safety engineers and put the exterior design of their cars above safety. In less than a year, Congress passed two auto safety laws that brought federal safety standards into effect and eventually led to the creation of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 1970.
Discrimination in crash testing
It is in this era of intense scrutiny of automakers that federal agencies require crash testing of cars. "Modern crash test dummies emerged in the late 1970s and early '80s," said Chris O'Connor, CEO of Humanetics, which makes standard crash test dummies (Hybrid III).
O'Connor explained that the Hybrid III was designed based on the average size of people in that period, and other size dummies were developed by enlarging or shrinking prototypes. A female version, he said, "is really just a slightly modified male." ”
So over the past 50 years, from seat belts to airbags to the size of dashboards, the introduction of car safety features has largely been based on the average level of men in the 1970s.
But women's muscle mass and skeletal structure are different, so not only do they sit differently in the car (for example, leaning closer to the front to reach the brakes), but also the injury is different.
Caroline Criado Perez, author of "Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men," says this includes women suffering more neck sprains than men because of the different muscle makeup of their necks.
Dr Jacobson said it was precisely because women had an increased risk of neck sprains that Volvo introduced a chair in 1998 that automatically absorbed most of the energy generated by rear-end collisions. Dr. Jacobson studied for a Ph.D. more than 20 years ago on a neck sprain.
She explains: "The seat is not fixed and moved, but will be slightly retracted. It's like taking a ball – you follow the ball with your hand. This is the main principle behind the design. ”
A seat study called WHIPS found that the seat reduced the risk of long-term neck injury by half compared to older Volvo models. It has been the standard seat for all Volvo models since 1999.
In 2011, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration updated its star rating system to include testing of female crash dummies. But there's a problem: Most of these tests require female dummies to be tested in the passenger seat — a decision stemming from the "1950s view that women sit either in the passenger seat or in the back seat," O'Connor said, though in 2019, more than half of licensed drivers in the U.S. were women.
Another blind spot in current crash test systems is that while most automakers still use Hybrid III dummies, the average body size has changed, with the proportion of overweight and obese drivers rising since the 1970s.
"If your BMI is 30 or above, you're 80 percent more likely to die in a car accident." O'Connor said, "It goes back to the fact that the restraint system wasn't designed for people who are bigger." ”
Multi-level solutions
Security advocates say multi-layered solutions to all of these problems include: updated dummies, virtual testing capabilities, and tighter regulation.
For example, researchers have developed a new generation of dummies, currently made by Humanetics, that are more representative of the average person — a process that took more than a decade of testing and cost tens of millions of dollars. Compared to the Hybrid III, the new dummy also has more sensors built in to detect different types of injuries.
The other system doesn't involve physical dummies at all.
The University of Michigan Transportation Institute, which has been collecting data on human body size and crash testing since the 1970s and 1980s, is one of the few research institutes in the world to develop virtual test systems that have been adopted by automotive companies over the past few years.
The system is typically used early in the design process, before the car enters physical testing. It can be used to generate mannequins with computers whose bones and muscles can be deformed according to different ages and sizes. The tool could also be expanded to allow automakers to test people of different ages, sizes and genders, such as 25-year-old men with a BMI of 30, or pregnant women aged 30.
"You're not limited by the physical dummy design, you can copy real fingers, and so on." Dr Jacobson said Volvo has developed its own similar tool in collaboration with Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, from which we can get a more detailed response.
O'Connor said the more accurate data collected from these tests will in turn help automakers design elements for different bodywork, such as fully customized seat belts or airbag systems.
However, none of these innovations are cheap to adopt or authorize, and activists and lawmakers are pushing for regulatory reform.
In January 2021, the Center for Responsive Legal Studies, a nonprofit research organization run by Nader, released a report to mark the 55th anniversary of the publication of his seminal book, which made recommendations to update current testing standards and regulations. One proposal would create a separate scoring system that "applies female injury criteria to virtual test results."
In July, the House and Senate introduced bipartisan bills that would investigate gaps in federal tests and standards. For example, according to a statement about the bill, the House bill would "order the Government Accountability Agency to conduct a comprehensive study of the current federal auto safety tests and how these tests affect the safety of all drivers and passengers." The bill also requires an assessment of "the Failure of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to use crash test dummies that represent the driving public, especially women, when assessing vehicle safety." ”
"I was shocked to learn about allegations of gender inequality in car safety testing." Rep. Gus Bilirakis, Republican of Florida, a co-signer of the House bill, said in a statement. "I think of my wife, my mother, my sisters — and all the women in my life who knowingly buy cars for their families."
"This important legislation will modernize testing and improve the safety of all drivers."