The Current - The first female crash test dummy prepares to hit the road

Episode Date: December 8, 2025

Did you know that your vehicle won’t have been properly safety tested for female drivers or passengers? That’s because all the modern safety features we have like airbags and seatbelts have all been designed to protect the average male body. We speak with Chris O’Connor, who’s known as “the father of the modern crash test dummy” about how his company is changing that by designing the first-ever female crash test dummy.

This ascent isn't for everyone. You need grit to climb this high this often. You've got to be an underdog that always over-delivers. You've got to be 6,500 hospital staff, 1,000 doctors, all doing so much with so little. You've got to be Scarborough. Defined by our uphill battle and always striving towards new heights. And you can help us keep climbing.

Donate at lovescarbro.cairbo. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. Gosh, Darlene, it sure is amazing how much we have in common. I know, Larry. We both love three-car pile-ups. We both were building Buffalo. And we both know wearing safety belts help save thousands of lives.

Yeah, this is fascinating. Don't mind Vince. He's getting over a bad break. I know. Janet's picking up the pieces, too. They're in here. I wish they understood it's all worth it to get people to buckle up. Hey, lacerated lovebirds, I sense a major crush. You could learn a lot from a dummy.

Buckle your safety belt. Talk about head over heels. Remember those car safety ads from the 80s and 90s? They had a couple of crash test dummies and their dates. They were out for a drive. They're destined to crash. The ads are about making sure that you buckle up and wear your seatbelt. Well, it turns out that the ads actually got a couple of things wrong.

One, crash test dummies don't talk. And two, until very recently, there weren't. any female crash test dummies at all. One company in the United States is changing that. Chris O'Connor is known as the father of the modern crash test dummy. He is the CEO of Humanetics. It's a company that has designed the first ever female crash test dummy. Chris O'Connor, good morning. Good morning, man. How are you today? I'm well. People have been driving cars for a long time. People have been calling for female crash test tummies since 1980. Why has it taken so long, do you think? to create a female crash test dummy?

Well, it's interesting. You know, the original crash test dummies were based on a male because typically back in the 40s and 50s were more male drivers. And that's completely changed now. And so because of that, now is the time to create them? Well, I think the time was probably 20 years ago, but I like your intro, we can learn a lot from a dummy.

And so the reality is we know much more now than we know then. we had to start somewhere. So the industry started with a male, 50th percentile from 1980s. And we're still using that dummy predominantly around the world. It's only changed recently as technologies change. We've able to put a lot more sensors in a dummy and make them a lot more biofidelic or human-like. And so we've really had the great opportunity over the last 10 years to create the first female crash test dummy because we're seeing a

disparity between female injuries and fatalities and male injuries and fatalities. The stats are really alarming. Men make up the majority of car crash victims, but women are more likely to die in collisions of comparable severity. Women are something like 73% more likely than men to sustain serious injuries in a crash. They face a higher risk of specific trauma, including pelvis and liver injuries. Is that in part what motivated you to make this move now? Absolutely. Absolutely. I wish we could move quicker to get these test products in, but there is a process to do it. But when you're 73% more likely in the case of a woman to be injured, these are serious injuries that are debilitating and keeping them from working and taking care of their children. And so now we have in the U.S., 51% of licensed drivers are females. And I'm sure in Canada, it's very similar. And as a result of that, obviously, we have women in the front seat. And a lot of A lot of tests actually are only conducted with these male dummies and, you know, smaller males, which they've tried to convert to females, are put in the back seat. Well, certainly we need to get

women in the, not only the front seat, but in the driver's seat. And so your new dummy, the name is Thor 5F. How is it different than the crash test dummies that we might be familiar with? It's significantly different. This is a cataclysmic change because we've learned so much over time. And when we look at the new Thor crash test dummies, not only is everything more human-like, but we have 150 sensors where the older crash-dust dummies might only have 20 or 30 maximum. And so by putting sensors in different areas that reflect real injuries, so our female crash-dust dummy has injuries, a female would sustain that's different than a male. You had mentioned some of the body parts that are more susceptible to injury for a female. Lower legs is a good example. Significantly more injuries we see in a female, and yet we didn't have sensors there.

So by putting those sensors in the area for a female crash test dummies, we can design safer cars to prevent those injuries. What do you think in the best case scenario, what would the use of these dummies lead to when it comes to designing safer cars? Yeah, well, you can't design a safer car if you don't know how to prevent the injuries. So now you can design safer airbags and seatbelts to prevent those injuries. I mean, anatomically, there's a difference between a male and a female. A female has a more rounded pelvis.

The seatbelt, as traditionally designed, is better fit for a male than it is a female. So as females are sliding under the seatbelts of today's standards, we're seeing more abdomen injuries. We're also seeing a much higher percentage of low. leg injuries. So these can be prevented. I mentioned the name Thor 5F and people what is that all about? It's test device for human occupant restraint fifth percentile female. Is that right? Yes, that's correct. And so one of the things that people have said is, is that it's great that this has been designed, but the fifth percentile female means it's a very

small woman. And the concern is that this dummy is so small that it perhaps is not representative of the average female body. Would that be an obstacle in terms of how successful it will be? Absolutely not. In fact, it's just the opposite. The sensors that are in the Thor fifth are sensors where we see injuries and the cause of fatalities for females. And actually, what you want to look at is the more extreme scenario. So the most injurious females would be on the smaller side. And so by protecting those injuries, you're protecting the injuries for the 50th percentile and the 60th and the 70th percentile. So it's actually a way to get more safety, more safety around that. Coincidentally, the 450th male was designed from the 1980s. So quite frankly, that's actually

more representative today of current female 50th percentile. So by having both those crash test dummies in the car in the same seating, women are really doubly protected. It's not often we get to speak with the father of the modern crash test dummy. And I think people have an idea of what crash test dummies are, but they don't actually know how they work. Can you explain what we learn from these sorts of dummies? Well, you know, we do a lot of software modeling and predictions for what happened, but at the end of the day, you still need to have a physical representation.

And so the anatomical features of a crash test dummy represent exactly. exactly what we'd see. So you'd know not only would you have a broken bone, but we'd know whether there's ligament damage or bruising or injuries. So they're very exact, very specifically. Every body part represents what a human would be. And so putting those in a car and a test, it's not only test at the end. Most people see a crash when a car is complete. It's actually through the entire design process. So you're designing a safer airbag. You're designing a safer seat belt. at safer seat, headliner, steering wheels. Everything that goes in a car is tested to provide safety.

And that's where that test device being the crash test dummy is used to make everything in the car safer. And so if you don't have sensors in areas like we talked about for females with lower legs, well, then you might have injure spots in the knee bolster or down in the lower parts of the car that's very close to the occupant of compartment. And if a female also has their seat very close because of shorter legs, then you don't have a lot of room. So we have to design safer cars. We need to know where those injury points would be. And so you design the dummies and then you hand them over, or not hand them over, but it's the car companies themselves that would use them, right? Yes.

They're used by car companies, but they're used by Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers who provide safety features like airbags and seatbelts and child seats to make sure that each of the companies. components also are safe before they would go into a car. They're expensive, right? The dummies are about a million dollars U.S. each. Yes, they could be that expensive because as you put more and more sensors on to make a difference, you also have to gather that data in microseconds. But these crash test dummies last literally forever. We're still using older crash test dummies 40, 45 years later.

You can use the same crash test dummy over and over again to test multiple vehicles, multiple platforms. And so if you look at the cost per car, it's literally in the pennies. How do you convince the manufacturers of that? They have been lobbying, as I understand it, in the United States, against changing the testing standards, right? Well, this is the world we live in. It's a complex process like anything, right? You have OEMs, car companies who say they want the safest cars in the world. But yet, if you look, and I'll use U.S. stats for a moment, our fatality rates had actually increased. over the last 12 years by 30% because we haven't introduced any new platforms.

In Europe, we've introduced the first Thor 50th male, not the female yet, but that's coming. And as a result of that, they've all reduced their fatality rates. So, yes, a lot of car companies will say, I don't want it. I don't want change because they're resistant to any change or any regulation. And that's the world we live in. But the reality is we need regulation and safety-minded organizations. organizations who are in place to say what's in the best interest of consumers, and clearly saving lives is a significant thing. And as I've said, the cost per vehicle is actually almost

inconsequential. Do you think there needs to be pressure from government to force the manufacturers to use dummies like this so that their vehicles can be as safe as possible? It's the only way. It's the only way that we've seen in history. Right now, every car company can use these more advanced crash dust dummies, but they're not. They're not until NHTSA says or any NACP from Canada to the rest of the world, the NCAP puts in place a requirement to use it to meet a five-star rating or the Insurance Institute does it to meet a top safety pick. Unless that's done, it isn't done.

Is there a role for us as well? I mean, those of us who are in the cars, the drivers of the cars, the purchasers of the cars, to demand that our cars are as safe as possible. Absolutely. And I think we're seeing that probably for the first time in history. There's certainly a movement over the last few years. We see through Congress the She's Drives Act, which is basically was pushed by people, in this case women, who said, why isn't a car just as safe for me? Why, when I go to look at a five-star rating, wouldn't that be the same safety? level for a woman that it is for man, and the reality is it's not. And so they're demanding to say,

I want a female crash test dummy in every seating position that a male is in. And by having both the female and male, then we can also get to adaptable restraints, which is the technology already exists. Why shouldn't the safety restraints respond to the people in the car? Because we all have cars where our wife's driving, our daughter's driving, our grandmother's driving, you know, somebody's driving and we're not all the same size. We're not all the same shape and we're certainly not all the same gender. I suggest that, I mean, that's really interesting, that there's a real possibility. You just wonder whether other nations, I mean, this last point is that the United States

car industry is under great threat, for example, from China, particularly in the EV sector, but beyond that as well, whether there are other nations that perhaps might leapfrog the U.S. and Canada when it comes to those safety expectations. Yeah, and it's unfortunate that everybody's saying, well, it's about. about cost, but it's not. In fact, we're seeing China actually starting to lead safety now. So for the first time, they're not only developing cars at half the price and electric cars at half the price as other countries, they're actually demanding the same level of safety and now more. They're actually introducing new crash standards that the rest of the world

hasn't even seen yet. Chris, this is really interesting. Glad to talk to you about it. Thank you very much. Yeah, of course, Matt. It's a pleasure and have a good day. Connor is the CEO of Humanetics. He's designed the first ever female crash test dummy. This has been the current podcast. You can hear our show Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1 at 8.30 a.m. at all time zones. You can also listen online at cbc.ca.ca.com or on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.com.ca.com. Podcasts.