Each year, more people die on America’s roadways than were killed during the Vietnam War—and many of these deaths are preventable. Yet despite decades of advances in automotive engineering, a critical and often overlooked design failure continues to put millions of drivers at unnecessary risk—particularly women.
A recent opinion video by Eve Van Dyke, published by The New York Times, highlights a systemic issue at the core of vehicle safety design: for decades, cars have been engineered and tested primarily around the male body. The consequences are measurable, foreseeable, and, in many cases, preventable.
The Hidden Design Bias in Vehicle Safety
Modern vehicle safety systems—seatbelts, airbags, and structural crash protections—are validated using crash test dummies. These dummies are intended to simulate how the human body responds in a collision.
However, the “standard” crash test dummy has historically been modeled after an average male. Even the so-called “female” dummy used in many tests is often just a scaled-down version of the male model, failing to account for key anatomical and biomechanical differences.
As a result, critical differences in pelvic structure, spinal alignment, muscle distribution, neck strength, and seating posture have not been adequately incorporated into safety design or testing protocols.
The Data Is Clear: Women Face Higher Injury Risk
This design gap has real-world consequences. Although women are statistically less likely to be involved in car crashes, they are significantly more likely to be injured or killed when crashes occur.
Research shows that women are approximately 17% more likely to die in a crash and women are 73% more likely to suffer serious injuries.
These disparities are not attributable to driving behavior. They are the predictable outcome of safety systems optimized for a different body type.
Why Crashworthiness Fails Women
Crashworthiness—the ability of a vehicle to protect occupants during a collision—depends on how well safety systems interact with the human body.
When those systems are designed around inaccurate assumptions, several failure modes emerge:
- Seatbelt Misfit: Women, on average, sit closer to the steering wheel and experience different belt positioning across the chest and pelvis, increasing the risk of soft tissue and internal injuries.
- Airbag Deployment Risks: Airbags calibrated for male physiology may deploy with force profiles that are not optimized for female occupants.
- Whiplash Vulnerability: Differences in mass and neck strength contribute to higher rates of cervical spine injuries.
In short, vehicles may perform well in regulatory testing while still failing to adequately protect a substantial portion of real-world occupants.
A Long-Overdue Shift in Safety Testing
The video highlights emerging efforts to correct this imbalance, including the development of more biofidelic female crash test dummies equipped with advanced sensors capable of measuring injury risk across a wider range of body types.
These next-generation models aim to better replicate female anatomy and biomechanics—an essential step toward improving safety outcomes. But progress has been slow. For decades, manufacturers and regulators relied on incomplete data, even as injury disparities persisted.
Legal Implications: When Design Choices Create Liability
From a products liability perspective, these issues raise serious questions:
- Was the vehicle reasonably safe for all foreseeable users?
- Did the manufacturer rely on testing protocols known to be incomplete or biased?
- Were safer, feasible alternative designs available?
When manufacturers fail to account for known risks affecting identifiable groups—such as women—those omissions may form the basis for liability under crashworthiness and defective design theories.
Courts have long recognized that a manufacturer’s duty includes designing vehicles that minimize injury risk in foreseeable collisions. When safety systems systematically underperform for a large segment of the population, that duty may be breached.
The Path Forward
The takeaway is straightforward: vehicle safety is not one-size-fits-all. When design and testing fail to reflect real human diversity, preventable injuries and fatalities follow.
As the science evolves, so too must industry standards—and accountability. For victims and their families, understanding how and why a vehicle failed is often the first step toward justice.
If you or a loved one have been seriously injured in a motor vehicle crash, contact Jaime Jackson Law on 717-519-7254 or through our website.
To watch the video, click here (NY Time subscription may be required): https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/24/opinion/car-safety-women-crash-dummies.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
Read more articles Contact us today