A smarter crash test dummy – with more female characteristics – is set to join Australia’s family.
The new female test device for human occupant restraint (also known as Thor) has a female-shaped pelvis, more sensors compared with previous models, and breasts. She weighs 47.5kg, is 1.5m tall and has 150 sensors that will measure the impact of a crash on areas where women are particularly vulnerable.
There has long been criticism that crash test dummies, which were created in the 1970s when drivers were mainly men, do not properly test for the female body shape, putting women at higher risk of injury and death.
Men are more likely than women to be involved in a car crash but women are more likely to be seriously injured. They are more vulnerable to whiplash, sit closer to the steering wheel and may have less dense bones.
Women also have different fat distribution, musculature and bone structure. Where “female” dummies exist, they tend to just be a shrunken version of the male.
The Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute announced last year it had created the first dummy modelled entirely on a female body.
But the chief technical officer of the Australasian New Car Assessment Program, Mark Terrell, says Ancap uses a range of dummies to test and rate cars’ safety.
There are some misunderstandings about how crash test dummies work, he says, and Ancap has had dummies with female characteristics for a long time – but now plans to get a more advanced one.
From cadavers to dummies
In the early days of crash research, human volunteers, cadavers (corpses for scientific use) and animals were all used to measure the impacts of car crashes and inform the design of dummies.
But, the human volunteers proved “unfeasible”, not least because they could not be used in more serious crashes.
It has been revealed that as recently as 1993 university researchers in Germany were using adult and child cadavers in crash tests.
The use of cadavers was complicated by obvious moral and ethical reasons, but also by several practical considerations: they are not physically representative of live humans; they needed to have died non-violent deaths so the injuries could be clearly studied; and the experiments could not be replicated.
Chimpanzees, bears and pigs were also used to test the impact of accidents on organs but were phased out due to inadequate results as well as animal welfare concerns – although there are reports China was using pigs as recently as 2019.
The first artificial dummy, called Sierra Sam, was developed in the middle of last century and was a basic model used to test plane ejection seats. He was replaced in 1971 by the Hybrid 1, and since then the anthropomorphic test devices have continued to evolve.
Today dummies are made of steel, aluminium and plastics, and filled with sensors. There are different ones for frontal and side crashes. Terrell says they combine male and female characteristics so even the “male” dummy can be used to predict the injury of a female.
Statistics and software are used to model different crash scenarios, sized people and vulnerability profiles, and to make the dummies as human-like as possible, while able to withstand the enormous pressure of a crash.
New vehicles are put through a range of destructive tests – frontal impact, side impact, run-off-road, rear-end and pedestrian strikes – at Ancap’s testing facilities in Sydney and Melbourne.
The vehicles are on a tow skate, and a cable system pulls them and other equipment around, with the tow skate disconnecting just before impact so the car is free running when it hits the target.
The dummies survive many crashes and many years – up to 20. They are recalibrated after a set number of tests, and parts are replaced when necessary.
“If you have a set of cadaver tests, there’ll be a range of different ages, sizes and statures, and also different genders and you need to use statistics and so on over maybe 100 tests and work out the scale to work out how that relates to a real person,” Terrell says.
“It’s not the case you have a female dummy based on female volunteers and male on male.
“We’re obviously aware that people driving cars aren’t all the same size … we choose the most appropriate dummy for each one, then we broaden that out.
“You end up with a tool that has human characteristics and is as human like as you can get, but it’s still simplified.”
Ancap has had a male Thor since 2020 and Terrell says there’s a long “gestation time” for new dummies.
“It’s not an area that moves fast,” he says. “But the next significant new dummy that we’ll see is a small female Thor.”
The manufacturer, Humanetics, says the female Thor has 150 sensor channels “designed to help address those parts of the body where women have increased vulnerability to injury”.
It has also developed an obese male and an elderly female dummy.
Ancap now has two fifth percentile Hybrid III females, meaning they weigh less than 95% of females. They are used to test airbags and seatbelts on smaller people who sit further forward, with the seatbelt in different positions.
A Hybrid III 50th percentile male dummy (meaning he is a median weight) is used to gather data on likely head, neck, chest, leg, knee and ankle injury risks.
There is a side impact dummy, and two children – representing a six-year-old and a 10-year-old.
Others are used to represent pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists.
