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Did you know that American women are 47% more likely to be injured in a car crash? What about South African women? Well, I can’t find any statistics that can accurately measure how safe cars are for women in this country.
After reading this article on how seatbelts are a lot less safe for women on The Pool, I began to wonder about how safe they are for women in South Africa and about vehicle testing in in SA in general.
I know that female crash test dummies were used in the US since 2003, but automakers only started using them as regular fixtures in testing in 2012, according to ABC News. But what about testing for the vehicles we get in SA?
Well, the cars we drive here are tested by two organisations called Euro NCAP (European New Car Assesment Program) and ANCAP (Australasian New Car Assessment Program) who both test a variety of vehicles and rate their safety out of five stars. EuroNCAP only began testing cars with a small female frontal impact dummy in the front driver’s seat and in the rear passenger side seat in 2015.
So, if your car was brought out prior to 2015, it was only tested with male test dummies.
So why is this testing for women so important? Well, besides the obvious issue of women having different physiology (hello boobs and hips), there’s also the issue that we are generally shorter, have smaller bones and lower bone density which puts us at a much higher risk of injury or death in the event of a car crash. According to a Swedish study in 2012, women are twice as likely to suffer injuries like whiplash when hit from behind. These researchers produced a crash test dummy to represent the average female and do testing to combat the problem.
Exclusive female automotive insurance company, 1st for Women, didn’t have any stats either, but Robyn Farrell, their Executive Head did have this to say: “For decades the auto industry conducted crash tests with crash test dummies modeled on males. This changed only recently and... It’s surprising that it’s taken the auto industry so long to realise this but we’re glad to see that the industry is now putting women, and their safety, first.”
Yes, it’s fantastic that our safety is finally being considered, but why so late? Essentially, every time we get into a vehicle, we’re relying on insufficient research.
UPDATE: A previous version of this article stated that EuroNCAP does not do any testing with female dummies. That is incorrect. Euro NCAP began testing cars with female dummies against a rigid barrier in 2015.
