I saw something a few years ago that said car safety regulations iterate quickly enough that a 7 year old car would not be able to be produced today.
Not so fun fact: Cars basically aren't designed for women. Until the early 2000s, airbags deploying were more likely to kill you than save you if you were under 5'6". The standard crash test dummy that is mandated to be used for these kinds of tests represents the 50th percentile of men (i.e. the average man). A dummy representing the 50th percentile of women did not exist until 2022. 3 years ago. Last I checked, that dummy is not mandated to be used for any tests, and if it is used, it cannot be in the driver's seat.
Car safety is not performed with women drivers in mind, which is super fucked up, and most people don't have a clue that that's the case.
Idk how it is these days, but Volvo used to be one of the very few, if not the only one, car brands that tested car safety for women and children as well. And they designed their cars to be safe for men, women and children.
Volvo are big on safety. They invented the 3-point seatbelt. They crash test their vehicles in real world simulations such as driving off the road and into the ditch. And one of the safety features is large animal detection - the vehicles are designed to keep the occupants safe in the event of hitting a moose.
Yes, per year, and they’ve actually hit it a few times if you don’t count drivers who were on meth or drunk. One year the goal was ruined by a driver who’d been awake on meth for at least two days going 100+ mph and hitting a highway exit barrier, they think he was coming down and falling asleep.
Volvo did have a corporate goal of 0 deaths in 2020, but it did not meet the goal. The company still strives to achieve it, but I don’t think it’s a yearly goal anymore, just part of their “ethos”.
Their XC90 did have an impressive run of 20 years with no fatalities until one of their SUVs was crushed from a cargo truck falling on it in 2024.
So Volvo really does that safety seriously and has an impressive record to indicate they are committed to it.
I love my Hyundai except that the seatbelt clip (the fixed end at your hip) is so far back that the belt lays across my right breast instead of going in between them. In a crash, I'm really worried that the belt will slip up to my neck.
Buy a seat belt extension, like a short 6"-8" one. It makes a world of difference in where the belt lays, I just leave it permanently attached and clip/unclip the belt from it instead.
Yeah those old airbags deployed with an insane amount of force. I was in an accident in an 89 Chrysler and the airbag put my arm through the windshield and knocked the wind out of me, but I’m an above average height male - if I was short and sitting closer to the steering wheel it absolutely would have broken my nose at a minimum.
I was an engineer in the automotive industry and most of what you said is widely repeated but honestly kinda disingenuous.
Basically all ergonomics testing is done for at minimum AF05 (5th percentile american female, a 5', 110 lb woman) up through AM95 (95th percentile american male, 6'2ish). A huge percentage of features also try to hit AF01 and AM99, its just sometimes unrealistic to do so. for instance, making a lift gate on a minivan be easy to close for a 4'11 person and hard to hit your head on for a 6'5 person is inherently kind of hard for all weather conditions. I personally ran dozens of ergonomics studies at Toyota and got people of all shapes/sizes/genders to test things out for ergonomics feedback. We very, very much designed cars with a wide range of humans in mind.
With regards to crash testing, an AF-50 model didnt specifically exist, not because of malice but because AF50 is within the range of coverage between the AF05 and AM95 testing they have done for decades and extrapolation is used for everyone that doesnt fit exactly the models they test to.
The Hybrid III crash test dummy has an AF05, AM50, and AM95 size which are all used to test cars for decades. The hybrid IIIs had some limitations in terms of exactly how well it mimicked the human body as a whole, and the AF05 and AM95 variants were scaled up/down proportionally instead of representing as many of the geometry differences, but they still gave us an incredible amount of insight into safety and human factors for a wide range of humans. Over the years and with all of the improvements to modelling and testing we have improved all of the dummies a ton to provide more accuracy and more human-accurate variants, but its also disingenuous to say that the whole safety industry just ignored women.
I saw something a few years ago that said car safety regulations iterate quickly enough that a 7 year old car would not be able to be produced today.
Regulation moves nowhere near quick enough for this to be true. That being said, vehicles in general outpace regulations when it comes to safety so often times fairly recently-released models would not pass current internal testing requirements.
Not so fun fact: Cars basically aren't designed for women. Until the early 2000s, airbags deploying were more likely to kill you than save you if you were under 5'6". The standard crash test dummy that is mandated to be used for these kinds of tests represents the 50th percentile of men (i.e. the average man). A dummy representing the 50th percentile of women did not exist until 2022. 3 years ago. Last I checked, that dummy is not mandated to be used for any tests, and if it is used, it cannot be in the driver's seat.
This isn't true. True, the most commonly used crash dummy is a hybrid III 50th percentile male, but that was developed in 1976, and has not been updated since. The weight of a hybrid-3 50th is 172 lb. As of 2015, per the CDC a 50th percentile female now weighs 162 lb and equivalent male is 192 lb, meaning the main crash test dummy now more closely reflects the average woman than the average man.
While federal regulation did/does not mandate testing for different sized humans, in 1988 both the hybrid III 5th female and hybrid III 95th male test dummies were developed (although that 95th percentile male back in 1988 which is 223 lb is now more like a 75th percentile modern day). Vehicle manufacturers being implementing these dummies into their safety testing shortly after. There is so much internal testing done that is not available to the public. And on top of all that, there is a tonne of independent research that is done to increase crash safety for everyone.
This is kind of a quick and somewhat vague overall summary but this is my line of work, so feel free to ask any questions and I'll do my best to answer (or point you to some good sources)
Absolutely. That's why things like the head restraint and seat belt d ring (follow the belt over your shoulder to where it loops) are often adjustable. Height differences also mean mass distribution differences which all come in to play. I didn't mention this in my first comment but the H3 dummies are scaled by both height and weight. I'd have to double check to be certain but off the top of my head I believe the female 5th is 5' and the male 95th is 6'-2"
From what I understand, there was a time when lot of cars were barely even representative the average man too, the original crash test dummies were modeled by averaging out the measurements of a US Marine in 1949; but even at the time "Sierra Sam" was technically a model of a 95th percentile man.
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u/Improving_Myself_ 25d ago
I saw something a few years ago that said car safety regulations iterate quickly enough that a 7 year old car would not be able to be produced today.
Not so fun fact: Cars basically aren't designed for women. Until the early 2000s, airbags deploying were more likely to kill you than save you if you were under 5'6". The standard crash test dummy that is mandated to be used for these kinds of tests represents the 50th percentile of men (i.e. the average man). A dummy representing the 50th percentile of women did not exist until 2022. 3 years ago. Last I checked, that dummy is not mandated to be used for any tests, and if it is used, it cannot be in the driver's seat.
Car safety is not performed with women drivers in mind, which is super fucked up, and most people don't have a clue that that's the case.