Talk like a road traffic safety expert

Component test — in vehicle development and evaluation, the assessment of individual components and systems found within vehicles

Crash test dummy — a life-sized model of a person used to assess how the body is affected by vehicle collisions

Open-source — in software, when the original code is freely available to be used and modified

Road traffic safety — the methods and measures used to minimise the loss of life and health in road systems

Whiplash injury — a soft-tissue neck injury caused by the sudden movement of the head relative to the torso, seen most often in car accidents

Crash test dummies simulate the human body and how it is affected in vehicle crashes. They are a critical part of the development process for new vehicles, and help to ensure the safety of a vehicle’s occupants. “Car manufacturers use crash test dummies to assess safety,” says Professor Astrid Linder from the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute, Chalmers University of Technology and Monash University. “The aim is to create vehicles that protect their occupants and other road users from being injured or killed in the event of a crash.” Such tests are required by international law as part of a bare minimum safety requirement that vehicles have to pass. “Vehicles may also undergo additional consumer tests that go beyond these minimum requirements,” says Astrid. “Organisations use these further tests to provide ‘star’ ratings that indicate the level of safety the vehicle provides.”

However, crash test dummies are modelled on the average male body, and although many aspects of male and female bodies are similar, there are some fundamental differences. For example, males and females have different muscle strengths and body shapes, particularly around the torso and hips. This means that safety tests may overlook some of the ways in which females are affected during a crash. “Injury statistics show us that females are not as well protected as males in certain types of crashes and for certain injuries,” says Astrid. “To establish how and why females are impacted in these ways, we needed to create models that we could use in testing.”

The origins of the first average female crash test dummy

Average male crash test dummies have been around for many decades, so the process for their development is well-established. However, one dummy cannot be used in all scenarios. “The human body is highly complex, and dummies are only made of metal, rubber and plastic!” explains Astrid. “This means we need to make models for different impact directions – if the crash comes from the front, rear or side – as well as for different severity levels and different types of injuries.”

Astrid began working with crash test dummies back in the 1990s as a PhD student for a project that made the world’s first dummy for low-severity rear impacts. “Our model was based on the average male because that was what we had access to,” says Astrid. “For me, the logical next step was to do the same for the average female, since injury statistics from the late 1960s and onwards showed that females were less well protected from whiplash injuries than males.” This began Astrid’s work into average female dummies, using data on body shape, proportions and muscle strength to build prototypes. “Of course, we didn’t get there straight away,” she says. “It was an iterative process that required a lot of learning and research over many years.”

Investigating whiplash injuries

Astrid is studying how the risk of whiplash injuries can be reduced in the event of a crash. Whiplash injuries are injuries to the soft tissues of the neck and can cause long term consequences. “These injuries occur at lower velocities in all impact directions, but are most commonly a result of rear impacts, where the seat has the biggest potential to offer protection,” explains Astrid. “For the evaluation of the seat, we can conduct component tests.” This means the team only uses the relevant parts of the car in their test: in this instance, the car seat. “We put the seat and the crash test dummy on a sled, and then subject the sled to impacts at different severities to test how well the seat protects the occupant from injuries,” she says.

Astrid’s team uses both average male and average female dummies, the recently developed Seat Evaluation Tool (SET) 50F and SET 50M, in these tests. “Our results, which we are in the process of publishing, indicate that the average male and the average female respond differently,” she says. “This has important implications for how to assess seat design to provide maximum safety for everyone.” Average female models are not used in any standardised testing, but this could change in the near future, providing important information for consumers about seat safety in different vehicles.

Overcoming regulatory road blocks

Research like Astrid’s, coupled with good common sense, makes it clear that average female crash test dummies should be used as a matter of course – so why aren’t they? “It’s a very common question that people ask,” says Astrid. “The answer is that no-one has done the work and put in the effort at the regulatory level.” Global safety rules dictate that a model of an average male should be used, so doing something different is not an option. “Until society demands that this changes, things will stay the same,” says Astrid.

Astrid is helping lead the charge to make these demands. “My current focus is publishing our research and being present in the groups where possible regulatory changes are discussed,” she says. “The models now exist – it is just a matter of using them.” Alongside physical tests, Astrid also believes that computer simulations should begin to play a bigger role. “We are about to finalise a virtual model of the SET dummies,” she says. “Our data is all open-source: we want to share this knowledge and foster its future development.”

Astrid’s pioneering work has not gone unnoticed: she was named on the BBC’s ‘100 most inspiring women’ list in 2023, and the Forbes Global 50 Over 50 list in 2025. While female crash test dummies are yet to become the norm, she is hopeful that this may soon change. “I think it’s reasonable that by 2030 the safety of new cars should be assessed for both females and males equally,” she says. “I hope that our average female model will provide the foundation for this.

Professor Astrid Linder
Professor of Road Traffic Safety, Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute

Adjunct Professor, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden

Adjunct Professor (Research), Monash University, Australia

Fields of research: Road traffic safety, injury prevention, physics, engineering

Research project: Developing the world’s first average female crash test dummy

Funders: The average female crash test dummy was developed as part of the Open Access Virtual Testing Protocols for Enhanced Road User Safety (VIRTUAL) project that received funding from the European Union Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No. 768960.