 and weighing 48kg (7.5lb), it represents the smallest 5% of women by the standards of the mid-1970s. However, a team of Swedish engineers has finally developed the first dummy, or to use the more technical term - seat evaluation tool - designed on the body of the average woman. Their dummy is 162cm (5ft 3ins) tall and weighs 62 kg (9.7lbs), more representative of the female population.So why have safety regulators not asked for it before now? "You can see that this is a bias," said Tjark Kreuzinger, who specialises in the field for Toyota in Europe. "When all the men in the meetings decide, they tend to look to their feet and say 'this is it'. "I would never say that anybody does it intentionally but it's just the mere fact that it's typically a male decision - and that's why we do not have [average] female dummies."Several times a day in a lab in the Swedish city of Linköping, road accidents are simulated and the consequences are analysed. The sensors and transducers within the dummy provide potentially lifesaving data, measuring the precise physical forces exerted on each body part in a crash event.The team record data including velocity of impact, crushing force, bending, torque of the body and braking rates.They are focused on seeing what happens to the biomechanics of the dummy du){kind=link}
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Dr Astrid Linder is leading the development of the first dummy modelled on the average woman
Since the 1970s, crash test dummies – mechanical surrogates of the human body – have been used to determine car safety.
The technology is used to estimate the effectiveness of seatbelts and safety features in new vehicle designs.
Until now the most commonly used dummy has been based on the average male build and weight.