Women are still more likely than men to be injured in the same crash

Women are 60 per cent more likely to be injured in a car crash than men in the same collision, according to a study by researchers at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) in Austria, reported by Hatty Willmoth in BBC Science Focus Magazine.

It isn’t that women have more crashes overall, as the Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics says that men make up around three-quarters of all road fatalities in Australia. When you look at what happens during the same crash, though, the statistics show that women consistently come off worse.

A 2019 University of Virginia study found that female front-seat occupants wearing a seat belt had a 73 per cent higher chance of serious injury in a frontal crash compared with males. In January this year, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) also found that women are more likely to suffer a moderate injury in crashes, although the difference between women and men when it came to serious or fatal injuries was not statistically significant.

The good news is that NHTSA research found that the difference in fatality risk between women and men fell from 18.3 per cent to 6.3 per cent in newer vehicles, mainly because of better design and safety technology.

These statistics are still confronting for me as a female motoring journalist who spends more time on the road than the average woman.

You may not know it, but historically, the design and crash testing of cars has been done using male dummies. Shock, horror, I know! It seems it really is a man’s world when it comes to vehicle safety.

Males have historically been considered the norm and the female part of the population has been left out of research and development, based on a society in which men did most of the driving.

Fast-forward to today and about half of Australian driving licence holders are female.

It all dates back to the introduction of Sierra Sam in 1949, the world’s first crash test dummy, which was built for the US Air Force to test aircraft ejector seats and pilot harnesses.

Sierra Sam was based on a 95th percentile American male. In 1971, General Motors introduced the Hybrid I, a 50th percentile male dummy designed specifically for car crash testing, but it wasn’t until 1988 that a 5th percentile female crash test dummy was developed.

The Hybrid III small female dummy was supposed to represent the smallest five per cent of the adult female population, but she was simply a scaled-down version of a male body, didn’t accurately represent female anatomy and didn’t enter US federal safety regulations until 2000 or the US New Car Assessment Program until model year 2011.

Stanford researchers at the Gendered Innovations project said: “Still lacking is a 50th percentile female dummy that models female-typical injury tolerance, biomechanics, spinal alignment, neck strength, muscle and ligament strength, dynamic responses to trauma, and other female-typical characteristics.”

The VTI road research institute in Sweden has since developed the SET 50F, which is said to be the first crash test dummy designed from the ground up around average female anatomy rather than just a scaled-down male design.

The Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP) introduced two 5th percentile adult female Hybrid III dummies into its full-width frontal crash test in 2018, one in the driver’s seat and one in the rear outboard passenger seat.

ANCAP’s full-width frontal test focuses on the interaction between occupants and the vehicle’s seat belts and airbags. It was this part of the assessment that revealed a seat belt failure in the Suzuki Fronx last year.

The organisation explained to carsales that smaller occupants can be more difficult to protect because they generally sit closer to the steering wheel and may be at greater risk of moving beneath the lap portion of the seat belt, known as “submarining”.

ANCAP also says its rear-seat dummy can provide useful insight into the protection offered to smaller occupants, such as older children who no longer use a child restraint.

However, ANCAP’s Hybrid III 5th percentile adult female dummies are about 150cm tall and weigh 49kg, whereas the Australian Bureau of Statistics says the average Australian woman is 161cm tall and weighs 72kg.

A new dummy called THOR-5F (Test Device for Human Occupant Restraint, 5th percentile female) features female-shaped pelvis and chest geometry, with around 150 sensors that can measure the impact of a crash on areas where women are particularly vulnerable.

She weighs 47.5kg and is about 150cm tall. The US Department of Transportation released her design specifications in November 2025, but she has not yet been brought into ANCAP’s testing protocols.

Because women tend to be smaller and shorter than men, they sit further forward to reach the pedals and steering wheel. This, combined with seat belts and airbags that were historically calibrated for the average male and women’s seating position, means safety systems might not perform as well for smaller drivers.

Male crash test dummies have been built with male body mass and muscle distribution, meaning the cars they have helped design may not protect women as effectively.

Research also suggests women are more likely to sustain moderate leg and pelvic injuries in frontal crashes, in part because their body fat distribution and pelvic structure differ from those of males.

A Swedish study found that women are also up to three times more likely to suffer whiplash injuries than men because they have less muscle mass in their necks.

The Austrian research led by TU Graz project coordinator Dr Corina Klug found that “women are injured disproportionately more often, especially in the chest, spine, arms and legs”.

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) in the US, women have historically been more likely to drive smaller, lighter vehicles that absorb less impact force during collisions with heavier vehicles. The IIHS also found that when a lighter vehicle collides with a heavier one, the occupants of the lighter vehicle are at a significant disadvantage.

More recently, medium and large SUVs have become more popular, often due to the way they are marketed to women, which may mean we start to see a change in these statistics.

An ANCAP spokesperson told carsales: “The Australian new car market, generally, has seen the physical size and mass of vehicles increase. This size creep is not limited to female car owners and drivers. In some cases, vehicle size and mass can be beneficial, but the most important consideration is how well a vehicle’s structure and restraints manage crash forces and protect occupants regardless of their gender, physical size, or stature.”

The TU Graz research also found that women and men over 50 are more affected in crashes due to increased bone fragility. Research has also found the passenger seat can be more dangerous than the driver’s seat, partly because some safety systems have historically been optimised for the driver’s position.

Newer cars are safer, but more than half the cars on Australian roads are older models.

ANCAP notes that the average age of registered passenger vehicles in Australia is around 11.3 years, up from 10.1 years a decade ago. The benefits of newer cars are that they generally provide a much higher level of crash protection and crash avoidance due to advancements in technology and design.

Vehicle manufacturers conduct their own physical and virtual crash testing during product development, some more rigorously than others.

For example, Volvo opened its crash test laboratory in 2000, where it does advanced physical crash testing, computer simulations and even a kind of post-mortem on cars that have been in real-world accidents.

Since 1995, Volvo has used diverse crash test dummies, including female dummies, starting with the Hybrid III 5th percentile. In 2002, engineer Laura Thackray designed a virtual pregnant crash test dummy that models the effects of impact on the womb, placenta and foetus.

Volvo’s Equal Vehicles for All initiative has also made decades of its crash research data publicly available to help the rest of the car industry improve safety for all occupants.

GWM recently announced that it had completed 4000 crash tests. Asked whether female dummies are used in its tests, the company told carsales it “currently has 34 crash test dummies, including 24 adult dummies, 17 male and seven female, as well as 10 child dummies, with a total value of approximately RMB 100 million (around $A21.4 million)”.

“Vehicle crash testing is placing increasing emphasis on female occupant safety. Female dummies are used not only in the driver and front-passenger positions, but are also placed in the rear seats during testing. This allows GWM to more comprehensively evaluate the level of protection provided to female occupants across different seating positions.

“The child dummies represent different age groups, ranging from one to 10 years old, with different heights and weights. During testing, they are positioned in the rear seats and are required to be secured using an appropriate child restraint system or booster seat.”

The good news is that female crash safety is receiving more attention than ever.

From this year, ANCAP has updated its frontal offset test, in which the 50th percentile male dummy that was previously in the front passenger seat has been replaced by a 5th percentile female dummy.

The full-width frontal test now also includes a THOR 50th percentile adult male dummy in the front passenger seat alongside the two female dummies.

ANCAP is also making greater use of sled testing and virtual simulations to assess how vehicles protect occupants of different sizes, seating positions and crash severities. Vehicles can also score additional points for seat belts and airbags that adapt to occupants of different sizes and seating positions.

There is also a global effort to develop a suitably advanced small female side-impact dummy for use in future crash tests.

As a mum of two, family car journalist and founder of BabyDrive.com.au, this is a topic close to my heart.

Research by Monash University’s Accident Research Centre (MUARC) found that only 41.4 per cent of pregnant women positioned their seat belts correctly and a staggering 87.7 per cent had never been told by a health professional how to wear one safely during pregnancy.

There is no exemption from wearing a seat belt during pregnancy in Australia. Wearing one correctly is vital for both mum and baby.

The correct way to wear a seat belt when pregnant:

If you are pregnant and unsure, ask your midwife or obstetrician at your next appointment.

These are some practical steps you can take to help keep yourself and your family safe:

Adjust your seat position: The NHTSA recommends sitting at least 25 centimetres from the steering wheel where the airbag is housed. When seated in the passenger seat, do not have it reclined or positioned too far back.

Check your seat belt: Make sure the sash sits across your collarbone, not your neck, and the lap belt sits low and tight across your hips, not your stomach. Adjust the seat belt height if your car has this feature.

Adjust your head restraint: The NSW Government recommends making sure the top of the head restraint is level with the top of your head and positioned as close to the back of your head as possible to reduce whiplash risk.

Buy the newest, safest car you can: Newer cars have better crash structures, more advanced airbag systems and active safety features that can help avoid crashes altogether. Look for models with the highest and most recent ANCAP safety rating you can afford.

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