Women make up about 50% of car-owners in the United States as well as in European countries such as France, Germany and Italy, and according to various studies carried out in the U.K. and the US, they are also much safer drivers than their male counterparts. According to these studies, men tend to drive more than women and exhibit much more risky behaviour while driving, resulting in 71% of car crash deaths involving men in the driver’s seat and crashing into another vehicle, as of 2019. 

That being said, that gap is narrowing, and women are at a much higher risk of injury or death than men – as of 2021, female drivers are 73% more likely than men to be severely injured if the car crashed. Why is this the case, you may ask? The answer is actually disappointingly simple: the lack of female car crash dummies and testing for female bodies. 

Female dummies: why we need them

Contrary to the prevailing belief up until increasing numbers of lawmakers and organisations started making waves about this issue about a decade ago, women are not just “smaller physiological versions of men”. We know – it’s a shocker. What is true however, is that female and male bodies have a ton of physiological and biological differences that cause them to be at much greater risk of injury than male drivers, including higher potential for whiplash, average weight and height, and a plethora of other factors. 

As we already saw in the 1990s “airbag crisis” which the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) only started documenting a few years ago, way more women than men – 85% to be exact – were at risk of severe head and neck injury due to deadly airbags. Back then, once people realised that this was due in large part to the lack of testing for female bodies, outcry ensued. Although lawmakers and automakers had no choice but to address this discrepancy and the deaths of women and children which ensued, change still took years to come. 

Today, we still find ourselves with an automotive industry mostly using average male dummies for their crash tests – and even when “female” dummies are being used, they are actually just smaller versions of male dummies. In the US and Europe alike, organisations and lawmakers alike have been pushing for legislation to make female dummy-crash tests mandatory, but we still have a long way to go. 

According to Jackie Gillan, President Emeritus of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety: “Even though more than 10 thousand women were killed and over 1.4 million women were injured in car crashes in 2017, the issue of higher injury and fatality risks for women is difficult to publicise,” which could partly explain why change has been coming about so slowly. 

Though this is the case, let’s not get too discouraged just yet – this has been becoming a more and more prominent issue both in transport legislation and the mobility industry in recent years, and there are some promising initiatives being launched in order to address it. 

Volvo’s E.V.A initiative

One of these initiatives is led by Volvo, who has been carrying out research on car safety and equality for forty years since the Volvo Accident Research Team was formed in 1970. The team has gathered and analysed data from more than 40.000 cars and 70.000 passengers, which has led to many of the innovative systems they have in their cars today.

The initiative’s slogan, “cars should protect everyone,” is far from an empty statement for Volvo: “By collecting real-world data for a long time, it has been possible to identify what injuries arise in different accidents for men, women, and children,” said Senior Technical Specialist Dr. Lotta Jakobsson. 

Because the Volvo Accident Research Team compiled data representing both genders equally, the E.V.A initiative has been able to create Volvo’s new seats, designed to protect from whiplash, the number one injury for women. With their Whiplash Protection System WHIPS, which combines a unique robust head restraint with clever seat design to protect both head and spine, we no longer see a difference in whiplash risk between men and women in Volvo cars. 

They have also designed a new intelligent safety shield for the side of their vehicles, created to address the disproportionate risk for women to suffer chest injuries in crashes, due to differences in chest anatomy and strength. Volvo’s innovative SIPS (Side Impact Protection System), relies on an intelligent structure to boost overall safety. In fact, SIPS, together with the side-impact airbag, reduces severe chest injuries by more than 50% for all passengers.

According to Volvo’s research, women also have specific protection needs when it comes to side impacts due to their height –  the lower in the car and closer to the steering wheel they sit, the more likely they are to be impacted – which makes the Inflatable Curtain that covers the full window a vital safety feature. This is why they have created the Inflatable Curtain airbag, which reduces risk of head injuries by approximately 75%. It inflates in 1/25 second, and prevents the head from impacting the objects on the outside of the car and other elements. It was also notably the first airbag system to offer improved protection for both front and rear seat occupants, taking side impact protection one step further.

Last, but certainly not least, one of our favourite aspects of Volvo’s initiative is the use of pregnant-female dummies. Not only is Volvo considering women equally in their research, they are also including pregnant women, which of course should be the case for all automakers (yes, pregnant women drive too!) The pregnant dummy is a computer model that makes it possible to study how the occupant moves and how the safety belt and airbag affect the woman and foetus, among other things. As a result, Volvo’s safety belt offers great protection for all types of crashes. 
Volvo takes safety very seriously, as co-founder Gustaf Larson expressed: “Cars are driven by people. The guiding principle behind everything we make at Volvo therefore is, and must remain, safety.” There are of course other initiatives being taken by various automotive companies in this direction, but Volvo’s E.V.A initiative is certainly one of the most promising ones to date. Their research, which amounts to over 100 research papers, is even available for download in its entirety for extra transparency. 

As women – and other people who don’t fit the average male dummy criteria – keep on journeying around their cities and the world, we need to push for faster and smarter change. Let’s hope the future brings many more initiatives like Volvo’s.

Pictures: Volvo Group