[HN Gopher] A crash dummy aimed at protecting women drivers
___________________________________________________________________
A crash dummy aimed at protecting women drivers
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 168 points
Date : 2022-11-07 15:20 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| [deleted]
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| a3w wrote:
| Looking for any mark of sarkasm here.
| drc500free wrote:
| Anything to do with gender on HN runs into Poe's Law
| basically instantly.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| enragedcacti wrote:
| How many women's lives are a fair trade for one man's life?
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| enragedcacti wrote:
| I'm not sure what answer I expected but extinguishing all
| humanity was definitely not it.
| dang wrote:
| Url changed from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-
| first-female-c..., which points to this.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I am worried that cars are designed to pass a few really specific
| tests well, for example 'head on at 40 mph', 'side impact at 30
| mph', but then perform much worse in a 'typical' crash, for
| example '37 degrees, offset by 6 inches, at 38 mph'.
|
| I'd like to see the test methodology changed to correct this. Car
| manufacturers should be required to simulate what would happen in
| say 10,000 crash cases - with a wide variety of angles, loads,
| speeds, passenger types, offsets, etc. The car manufacturer
| should then present all those results to the NHTSA, who will then
| pick a few at random to test on a real car to validate the
| simulations.
|
| The safety rating would be some average of performance of all the
| 10,000 simulated test cases, with a scaling penalty applied if
| the simulations didn't accurately reflect reality.
| tfvlrue wrote:
| Along those same lines, I found this an interesting read:
| https://danluu.com/car-safety/
| bombcar wrote:
| > I am worried that cars are designed to pass a few really
| specific tests well, for example 'head on at 40 mph', 'side
| impact at 30 mph', but then perform much worse in a 'typical'
| crash, for example '37 degrees, offset by 6 inches, at 38 mph
|
| This is literally the case:
| https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a40824939/iihs-side-impact...
| (and an earlier one that was added and IIRC only Volvo did
| well, because Volvo was testing it before it was required:
| https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a18737558/iihs-adds-new-fr...
| )
|
| I agree that digital simulation should become an important part
| - including aftermath simulation from actual wrecks.
| dont__panic wrote:
| I wish companies had to test new cars in collisions against the
| smallest, most vulnerable vehicles on the road. Cars exist in a
| shared environment; if Ford creates a new, taller, heavier
| F-250, it shouldn't be allowed on the road unless there's a
| reasonable chance that it won't brutally crush anyone driving,
| say, a 2005 Honda Civic sedan around in the event of a
| collision.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| Also: against pedestrians and cyclists.
|
| In fact, I'll argue that from a moral point of view it's
| _more important_ to ensure the safety of people who choose to
| _not_ operate a vehicle vs. those that did. Both are
| important of course, but this would be correct priorities. In
| reality the priorities are of course rather different.
| necovek wrote:
| European tests specifically test for pedestrian collisions:
| this is why we've got softer, crumpling bonnets and bumpers
| in newer cars, for instance.
|
| I would be surprised if other test agencies like the US one
| did not do the same.
|
| Cyclists are definitely harder because they are similarly
| unprotected human bodies travelling at higher speeds and
| with more chances of different collisions (i.e. it's very
| rare for a pedestrian to hit a car on the side, whereas I
| am guessing that's more likely for a cyclist).
|
| In general, I would give equal priority to testing for
| everyone, iow, prioritise by the numbers getting
| injured/killed.
|
| Btw, cyclists also make a choice of operating a vehicle
| (motorcyclists are similarly vulnerable because the
| characters of their vehicles are similar).
| dont__panic wrote:
| Agreed. The larger and larger vehicles of today are so much
| more dangerous for pedestrians, but they make me wonder:
| has any country _ever_ prioritized pedestrian safety in car
| design? Feels like the sort of thing that manufacturers
| ought to do, but I 'm not aware of it ever happening. Maybe
| there are regulators I don't know about who oversee this?
| lamontcg wrote:
| This was my first thought about the sex differences in
| accidents which is that they might reflect the average
| vehicle weight being driven.
| flumpcakes wrote:
| This is obviously a good thing - we should use crash dummies of
| all shapes and sizes, as people come in all shapes and sizes too.
|
| I wonder though if the statistics about male vs female injuries
| are down to personal choice of car rather than testing
| methodology. It would be good to see a break down of the
| statistics based on car model etc.
|
| For example, it is much more likely that a woman would own
| certain types of cars, at least in the EU. Some models are even
| referred to as "girly" in media. These typically are the more
| compact, city style cars like the Fiat 500. Likewise, it is much
| more likely for a man to be driving a larger white van, or any
| types of trades vehicle.
|
| This hasn't got much to do with the article itself, I just often
| see statistics used with very tenuous causal relationships. This
| does matter if the goal is to reduce the % of women's injuries as
| we need to change marketing and society as a whole, rather than
| just using a more feminine crash dummy.
| mberning wrote:
| It's not practical. Crashing cars is expensive and you need
| consistent data. You cannot use a different dummy on each test
| and expect to make sense of the data. The best we could do is
| come up with an acceptable model and use that for all/most
| tests. If we could accurately model crashes in software then
| there would be no limitation on doing thousands of crashes with
| all different dummy types.
| runnerup wrote:
| This isn't the first female crash test dummy at all. Dr. Mark
| Pearlman at University of Michigan invented a _pregnant_ crash
| test dummy like 30 years ago. There are plenty of female crash
| test dummies.
|
| Edit: according to congressional inquiry the NHTSA isn't
| necessarily currently using "female" crash test dummies[0].
| Still, they had been invented before.
|
| 0: https://norton.house.gov/media-center/press-
| releases/norton-...
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| "The first" followed by anything seems to be such an
| unbelievable marketing gimmick at this point.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > "The first" followed by anything seems to be such an
| unbelievable marketing gimmick at this point.
|
| Trust me, this isn't a marketing gimmick.
|
| You could say its the "real" first.
|
| See my comment lower down the page on Astrid Linder.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| This comment is very bizarre to me, based on the request to
|
| > trust me
|
| But I went and found your other comment.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33511009
|
| It is not at all obvious to me how this is the first of its
| kinda instead of an improvement on previous "female" crash
| dummies. I know this conversation has strayed into pure
| semantics, but the idea that an improvement to an existing
| thing is actually the "'real' first" seems like an obvious
| dubious claim. To be blunt: it seems like clickbait, or at
| least an attempt to overinflate.
| dang wrote:
| Indeed. We almost routinely take it out now. Submitted title
| was "The First Female Crash Dummy Has Arrived". We've also
| changed the URL from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-
| news/the-first-female-c... to the original article it points
| to. Et tu, Smithsonian?
| taeric wrote:
| This got me to do a quick search, which yields
| https://www.nhtsa.gov/nhtsas-crash-test-dummies. I'm curious
| how they pick which dummies to use, as they have 5th percentile
| for women there.
|
| That said, it does seem to contradict the notion in the
| headline, at least.
|
| Edit: I think being fair to the concept of the article, the
| claim is the dummies in my link are just scaled down versions
| of each other?
| flaviut wrote:
| The article specifically mentions the 5th percentile dummy
| you pointed out being inadequate:
|
| > The dummy that is sometimes used as a proxy for women is a
| scaled-down version of the male one, roughly the size of a
| 12-year-old girl.
|
| > At 149cm tall (4ft 8ins) and weighing 48kg (7st 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 62kg (9st
| 7lbs), more representative of the female population.
| taeric wrote:
| Ah, nice! I definitely didn't catch that on my read
| through. Curiously, this doesn't really answer if the new
| model can be seen as just a scaled up version of that?
|
| Cards on the table, I see no reason not to explore this;
| such that if my post feels like I'm arguing against it,
| that is a mistake in tone.
|
| I do question if it was truly never explored in the past,
| or if there are previous results that just show diminished
| returns on extra variety? I'll note that nobody is calling
| for better racial makeup on the evaluation tool. I would
| expect that there are height/weight differences spread
| across groups other than just the sexes. I'm also inclined
| to believe that we are far more alike than you would expect
| when it comes to how we are in a crash.
| flaviut wrote:
| > Curiously, this doesn't really answer if the new model
| can be seen as just a scaled up version of that?
|
| It does though! It talks about how women are shorter &
| lighter (which the scaled model addresses) as well as how
| their muscles and general body shape are different from
| men:
|
| > Females are shorter and lighter than males, on average,
| and they have different muscle strengths
|
| > "We have differences in the shape of the torso and the
| centre of gravity and the outline of our hips and
| pelvis," she explained.
|
| Anyway, I'm certainly not an expert on this stuff. I
| imagine that extra testing is super expensive, especially
| if each test ends up destroying a car. I think it'd be
| great to have more tests for different groups. But
| starting to test for 50% of the human population is a
| massive low-hanging fruit here.
| taeric wrote:
| Apologies, I think they established that there is a need
| to do a test on this. What I question, is that the 5% was
| such a specific choice for the existing tools, that I
| feel that it needs to also be established that that
| "chesterton's fence" wasn't picked by its own research.
| That make sense?
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| > That make sense?
|
| Not OP, but I think you've done a pretty good job laying
| out your nuanced question / request for additional
| information. I have the same question, but didn't feel
| motivated enough to craft a comment myself, so I'm here
| validating yours. Cheers
| bckygldstn wrote:
| Here's the NHSTA report for a 2015 Ford Focus, the female
| model is used in the passenger seat [1]. In a quick look I
| couldn't find any tests with female drivers though.
|
| The male [2] and female [3] dummies look to be in different
| proportions.
|
| [1]: https://nrd-
| static.nhtsa.dot.gov/reports/vehdb/v00000/v09000...
|
| [2] https://www.humaneticsgroup.com/products/anthropomorphic-
| tes...
|
| [3] https://www.humaneticsgroup.com/products/anthropomorphic-
| tes...
| gw98 wrote:
| Yeah there's a relatively ancient female crash test dummy in
| the Science Museum in London.
|
| Photo I took. These folks have seen some shit in their time:
| https://imgur.com/TsEtUAx
| uri4 wrote:
| traceroute66 wrote:
| I have had the pleasure of meeting Dr Astrid Linder on a couple
| of occasions in the semi-distant past. Thoroughly impressive
| woman and this field of work (occupant diversity in crash
| testing) is very much her core area of expertise.
|
| Its been a while, but I believe the point here is that the
| American model is, as others have said, 30 years old.
|
| There are lots of problems with these 30 year old American
| models. Crash testing is one. Xray dosage another. Nuclear
| exposure another. The list goes on. So much of the world still
| refers back to these ancient models and people, mostly Europeans
| like Astrid Linder are working hard to modernise these.
|
| Astrid Linder's body of work that culminates in this present
| dummy takes into account real world data relating to size
| selection, anthropometry, modern knowledge of response corridors,
| more advanced assessment criteria, more suitable assessment
| thresholds, takes into account modern seat design.
|
| If you want to read more detail, you can start by looking up her
| work on the ADSEAT project (2009-2013) which incorporated work on
| EvaRID. For example, recording of presentation from 7 years ago:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AE51KAnukcg
| cumshitpiss wrote:
| Cool, crazy this wasn't done sooner
| sdiacom wrote:
| Well, if it has arrived, then clearly it isn't a great crash
| dummy.
|
| (I know this forum doesn't take kindly to jokes, but at least now
| there's one that isn't sexist)
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Specifications are important, but it's funny how you arrive at
| them and what defining them over time reveals even if it's
| obvious on its face.
|
| When I was doing work on default player mass on Planimeter Game
| Engine 2D, we would reference the average male weight to serve as
| the specification for player characters' mass so we would have
| some reasonable metric defined for physics calculations.
|
| The team also did work on the Quake family of engines and so from
| time to time we would reference Source, and QuakeWorld.
|
| It turned out that between the time that Valve's Source Engine
| had been written and the time that Planimeter Game Engine 2D was
| written, the average male weight had went up by a fair amount,
| because they too used an average male weight for the default
| player mass for their physics calculations as well.
| justferlafs wrote:
| mythhouse wrote:
| > but the currently available test dummies don't reflect the
| average female body
|
| Do they reflect average american body though, male or female.
|
| > Their dummy is 5-foot-3 and weighs about 137 pounds, per the
| publication.
|
| "The average American woman weighs 170.6 pounds and stands at
| 63.7 inches (almost 5 feet, 4 inches) tall. And the average waist
| circumference? It's 38.6 inches." Per google.
|
| Looks like the male dummy actually reflects average American
| woman in weight at 171.
| vxNsr wrote:
| Asking about avg isn't a great idea, you really want the modal,
| which might be near the avg but may not be. This was an issue
| that came up when they tried to design the optimal fighter
| cockpit in WWII, they designed a cockpit that fit no one well.
| KarlKode wrote:
| I think you mean the median.
| [deleted]
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| If there's no average male pilot, there's certainly no
| average driver, male or female. If tests with dummies are to
| be useful, they have to be interpreted as abstract results,
| not assumed to correspond 1:1 with what any individual human
| body would do.
|
| This "female" test dummy won't actually be representative of
| most drivers, just as the "male" test dummy isn't. Neither
| for men nor for women. I'm sure the people who interpret the
| test results understand this already of course.
| ilyt wrote:
| Stats on car accident injury rate vs BMI _would_ be interesting
| but I 'd imagine something like "the fatter the safer" (up to
| some level) would be the conclusion and so testing on skinnier
| model is harsher and will result in better safety.
| klyrs wrote:
| The heavier a person is, the more kinetic energy they have.
| Moreover, seatbelts don't really stop a person until flesh is
| sufficiently compressed against bone. From that, I'd reason
| that skinny people should have a higher survival rate.
| Intuition be damned, data is important.
|
| It shouldn't be hard to spec and built crash test dummies
| with simulated fat.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Lower momentum one way or the other sounds like the best
| predictor.
| Xamayon wrote:
| Just 'spitballing', but if the restraints are adequate, the
| compression of flesh may act to slow down and spread out
| the force of the accident to a certain degree. Bruising may
| be more likely, and the increased overall force might break
| ribs and such, but increased weight may have some benefits
| at some speeds/in some scenarios.
|
| Some possible downsides would be overwhelming the airbags
| capacity, and larger overall volume of space which needs to
| be protected from intrusion/crushing/etc. I Wonder how much
| this has been studied, hard rubber and steel dummies
| probably don't reflect conditions at the extremes very
| well...
| tjoff wrote:
| That is exactly what the crumple zone in the car is for
| though. You only have X meters of margin before you need
| to be at full stop. Assuming (dangerous to assume, yes)
| it does its job perfectly the most important factor
| becomes to react, that is to start the slow down as
| quickly as possible so you can utilize the crumple zone
| to max effect. I feel like flesh compression will mostly
| delay the impact rather than properly slowing you down
| (fast enough), which would be a bad thing.
|
| That is in part also why it is so important to have a
| properly tightened seat belt and why we have explosives
| to tighten it up further when a collision is detected.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Fit people also recover faster, which probably gives them a
| better survival rate over all. Fit people are probably less
| likely to linger with persistent injuries before perishing.
| Consider particularly the difficulty diabetics have with
| infection.
| prydwen wrote:
| A woman is not just 'a smaller male'. Male dummies do not take
| into account female's different weight distribution, muscle
| mass etc.
|
| This is one of the reasons why women are much more likely than
| men to die or be seriously injured in a car crash. The book
| 'Invisible women' by Caroline Criado Perez has a section about
| this, I highly recommend it.
| stickfigure wrote:
| > women are much more likely than men to die or be seriously
| injured in a car crash
|
| Can you cite an academic reference for this? I'm suspicious,
| but genuinely curious.
| waffleiron wrote:
| The first two links in the article might be of interest.
| Not exactly what you asked for but still might satisfy your
| curiosity.
|
| Edit: linked article changed, was referring to:
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-first-
| female-c...
| stickfigure wrote:
| I only found one link in the article, https://crashstats.
| nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/Publication/8117..., and the
| abstract begins with:
|
| _Aging increases a person's fragility (likelihood of
| injury given a physical insult) and frailty (chance of
| dying from a specific injury). Young adult females are
| more fragile than males of the same age, but later in
| life women are less frail than their male
| contemporaries._
|
| My impression is that this thread suggests the design of
| cars has a bias to male safety at the expense of female
| safety. This link doesn't support that conclusion.
| treis wrote:
| Dummies don't take muscles or weight distribution into
| account. They're metal skeletons with rubber bodies over
| them.
|
| This is one of those discrimination situations where the
| truth is actually the exact opposite of what is reported. The
| dummies tested are 4'11 95 pounds and 5'9" 171 pounds. If the
| extremes pass then it's likely everyone in between is fine.
| The people who aren't covered are those above 5'9" or 171
| pounds which skews heavily male.
| watwut wrote:
| The dummy in video seems to be way closer to woman then
| just size. For example, it has breasts. Those matter for
| seat belt position. So yeah, it seems that dummy is more
| then just smaller.
|
| But honestly, dont see issue. Men are loosing nothing in
| this. Male dummies will continue to be used too.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| > But honestly, dont see issue. Men are loosing nothing
| in this. Male dummies will continue to be used too.
|
| You're right of course, but I think the deeper issue is
| that crash dummies and tests are designed just for the
| "average" and that many people fall outside of this
| "average". As a 2 metre tall bloke I've sat in many cars
| where the head rest just doesn't raise high enough for
| example, which always struck me as a fairly serious but
| also easily fixable shortcoming.
|
| So the thing is that the issue of female crash dummies is
| a special case of the wider "crash tests should represent
| a wide range of people". Of course women of various
| shapes and sizes should be included in that, but also men
| of various shapes and sizes. By focusing so strongly on
| only specific groups (women in this case), I think
| sometimes these larger issues get kind of lost, even
| though the specific focus isn't really a bad thing in
| itself. e.g. stuff like "well, we included women now,
| which is what you wanted, so job done!" ... well, no...
| klipt wrote:
| It's funny that on average women already live 5 years
| longer than men, but every "gender equity" initiative
| seems more interested in increasing that gap than
| decreasing it.
| watwut wrote:
| There are actually people working on various causes of
| that - attempts to lower incarceration rates, initiatives
| for safety practices in work help men more then women.
| Initiatives against smoking and alcoholism make male
| lifespan larger. Less guns in society would actually lead
| to less men dead.
|
| One problem is that tackling easy causes of male deaths
| is met with complains about making men softer or
| feminizing them.
| mahkeiro wrote:
| There is one class of human being who are really at the
| bottom, and it's not women (or even poor women) but poor
| men. They die early, are more victims of violence, commit
| suicide more often, die at work an order of magnitude
| over women, have greater chance to be homeless, greater
| chance to have disabilities, have less partners etc etc.
| But let's be frank no one care about them, even in
| Europe.
| klipt wrote:
| You're kind of reinforcing my point that while there are
| things that _incidentally_ help men, none of that is done
| in the name of "gender equity".
|
| For example you mention incarceration and studies show a
| "sentencing gap" where if a man and woman commit exactly
| the same crime, the man will on average receive a longer
| sentence. But there is no call to reduce incarceration
| for men specifically. There are some calls to reduce
| incarceration for everyone. There are also bizarrely some
| calls to reduce it for women specifically in the name of
| "gender equity" (even though the "sentencing gap" already
| privileges women).
|
| Basically it's politically incorrect to specifically help
| men unless you wrap it up in language about how it
| _actually_ helps the people who matter, i.e. women and
| children.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| These kind of things aren't binary; some groups, on
| average, have it better in one area, and worse in
| another. But I don't think that should really come in to
| play when we're talking about one specific area (car
| crashing, in this case).
|
| The world is complex, and when dealing with groups of
| people even more so.
| magicalist wrote:
| > _By focusing so strongly on only specific groups (women
| in this case), I think sometimes these larger issues get
| kind of lost, even though the specific focus isn 't
| really a bad thing in itself_
|
| You can suggest testing a wider distribution of crash
| dummy types without also inventing a scenario in which
| this article somehow prevents that from happening.
| treis wrote:
| As someone 4 inches taller and uh... let's go with
| significantly heavier than 171 pounds I feel like I'm
| losing. I certainly wonder what would happen in a crash
| when I'm riding with my knees jammed against the
| dashboard. And weight is obviously important and it's
| rather concerning that I'm stressing the safety system
| past what it was tested against.
| adamweld wrote:
| The existing NHTSA female dummies have breasts as well.
| See:
|
| https://www.nhtsa.gov/nhtsas-crash-test-dummies
|
| Presumably the difference here is around weight
| distribution and other limb length and size proportions.
| Still I think "First Female Crash Dummy" is a stretch.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| The dummy's breasts don't seem to move in the video
| despite the impacts, I think they're probably made out of
| steel, or a very stiff rubber. I doubt they accurately
| simulate real breasts, I think they're on the dummy to
| convey femaleness.
| watwut wrote:
| They don't need to move much. The issue I noticed is that
| when my breasts grew, some safety belts went through
| throat (previously did not).
|
| They push the belt to the side.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| It's entirely possible this will make cars safer for
| everyone
| jefftk wrote:
| _> women are much more likely than men to die or be seriously
| injured in a car crash_
|
| I don't think that's right, at least not as stated? Many more
| men die in car crashes than women: https://crashstats.nhtsa.d
| ot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...
|
| Men tend to be in crashes that are more severe than women,
| though, probably because men are more likely to speed and
| drive drunk. If you try to look at crashes of equal severity
| (which is always a bit fraught since you don't have a real
| control group) then you do see something like what you're
| describing, though the NHTSA thinks this is mostly due to how
| robust men vs women are on average and not car design:
| http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811766.PDF
| themaninthedark wrote:
| I remember hearing somewhere that a number of the men
| involved in "speed and drunk" crashes are going through
| financial issues, life insurance doesn't pay out if you
| commit suicide but it does if you crash into a bridge at
| 100mph.
| kube-system wrote:
| Life insurance does typically pay out in case of suicide
| after a 1-2 year cliff. It's a health issue like any
| other.
|
| I doubt those instances are conscious financial
| decisions. Suicide methods are highly correlated to the
| methods people have at their disposal... and cars are for
| many, the most dangerous item they have.
| runnerup wrote:
| Life insurance often does but sometimes has a 2 year
| waiting period before it does. AD&D is a separate policy
| on top of life insurance, often worth an equal amount,
| which does not pay out in cases of suicide.
|
| So masking a suicide can double payments to the family.
| AD&D also does not pay out in deaths involving toxic
| substances or "reckless driving".
| Sharlin wrote:
| Natural language is always ambiguous, but it is very
| reasonable to interpret "women are much more likely than
| men to die or be seriously injured in a car crash" as
| P(death_or_injury | crash AND female) > P(death_or_injury |
| crash AND male)
|
| That is, women are more likely to die or be seriously
| injured CONDITIONAL ON being in a crash. So it is
| irrelevant that more men than women are injured in total.
| jefftk wrote:
| Conditional on being in a crash men are probably still
| more likely to be killed or injured, because the crashes
| men are in tend to be more severe (often due to their
| driving decisions).
| magicalist wrote:
| > _Conditional on being in a crash men are probably still
| more likely to be killed or injured_
|
| Sounds like the "probably" here is a guess?
| lesuorac wrote:
| Young + Male is a great way to increase your car
| insurance [1]. I think it's safe to say car insurance's
| cost is reflective of risk (cost) with a more serious
| accident costing more than a less serious.
|
| CDC also states that men get into fatal accidents much
| more often (2x) than females [2].
|
| [1]: https://www.moneygeek.com/insurance/auto/rates-by-
| age-and-ge... [2]: https://www.cdc.gov/transportationsafe
| ty/teen_drivers/teendr...
| magicalist wrote:
| No, that says "motor vehicle death rate for male drivers
| aged 16-19 was over two times higher than the death rate
| for female drivers of the same age".
|
| You're rehashing the above conditional probability
| discussion.
| Sharlin wrote:
| "Crashes involving male drivers often are more severe
| than those involving female drivers."
|
| "The number of driver fatal crash involvements per 100
| million miles driven in 2016-17 was 63 percent higher for
| males (2.1 per 100 million miles traveled) than for
| females (1.3 per 100 million miles traveled). Rates were
| substantially higher for males than for females ages
| 16-29, but were only slightly higher for ages 30 and
| older. The sex difference was largest among drivers ages
| 20-29."
|
| https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-
| statistics/detail/males...
| magicalist wrote:
| "per 100 million miles" is also restarting this
| conversation from scratch.
|
| _Conditional on being in a crash_ is the operative
| clause here.
|
| > _Crashes involving male drivers often are more severe
| than those involving female drivers_
|
| is closer to the mark, and the next unquoted sentence
| "However, females are more likely than males to be killed
| or injured in crashes of equal severity, although sex
| differences in fatality risk diminish with age" seems
| like it may be what the article was talking about, though
| the cited source is from 1998, well before a number of
| modern car safety features were standard (even air bags
| weren't required until that year).
|
| https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-
| statistics/detail/males...
| supercheetah wrote:
| Sure, there's still the question of survivability between
| men and women if those accidents are categorized based on
| severity with measuring things like speeds involved,
| whether it was a T-bone, type of road (highway, city
| street, etc.) and probably lots of other dimensions I'm
| leaving out.
| pwinnski wrote:
| In _a_ car crash, that is, per crash, women are much more
| likely than men to die or be seriously injured.
|
| Men are involved in many, many more crashes overall, but in
| _a_ car crash, cars are currently designed to protect men
| better than women.
|
| The indefinite article is doing a lot of work there.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Conditional on being in a crash, men are more likely to
| die due to being involved in more severe crashes. But
| _ceteris paribus_ , women tend to be more easily injured.
| pwinnski wrote:
| Literally the first sentence in the article says,
| "Compared to men, women are 17 percent more likely to die
| in a car crash and 73 percent more likely to sustain
| serious injuries in a front-end collision."
| jefftk wrote:
| The article does say that, but the article is
| simplifying. If you click through they're citing https://
| crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...
| which says 17% "given similar physical insults". But
| conditional on being in a crash is not the same thing as
| conditional on being in a crash of a given severity.
| Sakos wrote:
| The key point is that in the same situation, women are more
| likely to be injured from what I understand.
| taeric wrote:
| It does sound somewhat dodgy, though; as it implies they
| throw out the fatality data. Would love to see the data.
| Sharlin wrote:
| More men than women die conditional on being in a crash,
| because men tend to be involved in more severe crashes.
| But in crashes "of similar severity" women tend to be
| more severely injured than men. One confounding variable
| is the size of the vehicle, but it may be factored into
| the "similar severity" calculation.
| mathieuh wrote:
| Maybe they were injured instead of killed?
| watwut wrote:
| Men also drive more. Taxi drivers, truck drives, cops, all
| those professions are male dominated. And at least where I
| live, it is man drive family car to work and woman is more
| likely to go by public transport to work. Man is more
| likely to be the one to drive when family goes somewhere
| (and some are quite territorial about it).
| anikom15 wrote:
| Absolute weight is more important in a crash test scenario.
| If your proportions are correct, but the weight is far off,
| that's going to be much worse than having incorrect
| proportions with the correct weight.
| hammock wrote:
| What do you suppose is the error introduced by weight
| distribution differences, as opposed to the dummy being 40lbs
| (29%) too light?
| float4 wrote:
| > The book 'Invisible women' by Caroline Criado Perez has a
| section about this, I highly recommend it.
|
| I asked for this book for my birthday and read it. However, I
| couldn't help but notice that when the author wrote about my
| field (computers, broadly speaking) the research was often...
| lacking?
|
| She wrote a solid 3-4 pages on large phones and it was just
| surreal to read. Paraphrased:
|
| > Phones are very large. This is bad for women; they have
| smaller hands. Nobody knows why tech companies make large
| phones. It is very silly, because women actually use their
| phones more than men. I asked multiple tech journalists for
| an explanation, they had no idea either. Here I present some
| theories that can tie this issue to sexism: companies simply
| design phones with men in mind, companies expect women to
| carry a handbag all the time so a large phone is no bother,
| and so on. And sure, women could buy an iPhone SE but that
| model hasn't been updated in two years.
|
| Nothing about better battery life, nothing about better media
| consumption. It was so confusing, as every tech journalist,
| _literally_ every tech journalist, knows that bigger phones
| have better battery life.
|
| Sadly it made it a bit difficult for me to fully trust the
| rest of the book.
| ecshafer wrote:
| Anecdata but I, a man, prefer small phones that easily fits
| in my pocket and I can easily use with one hand. But
| otherwise most women I know have very large phones and when
| I've asked them, they prefer them. I think one component
| may be purses, but another is how likely one is to treat
| their phone as their primary computer.
| placatedmayhem wrote:
| Same. I have moderately large hands (XL motorcycle
| gloves), and I prefer the iPhone Mini form factor for the
| exact same reason. Sadly, it looks like it's gone to the
| graveyard. I haven't seen a flagship Android phone in a
| similar size recently either.
|
| To get the battery life, I'd rather have a thicker phone
| without increasing the screen size.
| phphphphp wrote:
| A bigger phone may have a better battery life, but that
| does not mean that better battery life is why phones are
| large. iPhones have gotten bigger while battery size has
| shrunk. There is literally a void inside of the iPhone 14
| Pro Max. Apple obviously make a very deliberate choice
| about the size of their phones, and so unless you have a
| plausible suggestion for the why of their sizing choices,
| your opposition to the idea that it's based on the average
| man's hand size doesn't hold up.
| davidktr wrote:
| Apple cut the production of the iPhone SE because of low
| demand. If it would be true that women would like to use
| small phones but cannot buy any, this is very hard to
| explain.
| Xylakant wrote:
| The small SE never was upgraded to anything resembling
| recent hardware. It's pretty much iPhone 6 level tech -
| no surprise demand was falling.
| stefanvdw1 wrote:
| A new SE was released just this year with an A15 chip so
| that's not it
| dtech wrote:
| Was that before or after it wasn't updated for years?
| kgwgk wrote:
| Has the average man's hand size doubled in the last
| fifteen years?
| creaturemachine wrote:
| The "void" only exists in models destined for one
| country.
| ithkuil wrote:
| > However, I couldn't help but notice that when the author
| wrote about my field (computers, broadly speaking) the
| research was often... lacking?
|
| The words "Gell-Mann amnesia effect" popped in my brain.
| Luckily it didn't affect you
| dhruval wrote:
| I can relate to your last sentence regarding trust. Happens
| alarmingly often when I read popular takes on things I know
| a fair bit about.
|
| Which makes me wonder about the extent to which I can trust
| popular takes in things outside my wheelhouse.
| adolph wrote:
| "Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as
| follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some
| subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In
| mine, show business. You read the article and see the
| journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the
| facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it
| actually presents the story backward--reversing cause and
| effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain"
| stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with
| exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story,
| and then turn the page to national or international
| affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was
| somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney
| you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you
| know."
|
| -- Michael Crichton
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-
| the-ge...
| nopenopenopeno wrote:
| Women are far more likely to have big phones because they
| are more likely to carry it in a purse.
|
| Based on the title alone, I couldn't take that book
| seriously.
| Larrikin wrote:
| From what I remember from phone history, the original
| iPhone was the size it was due to extensive research to
| ensure a Japanese woman's hand could reach all parts of the
| screen and there was a planned big push into Japan, which
| mostly succeeded at the time.
|
| But Korean women actually lead the push for bigger phones,
| since they could keep larger devices like the Samsung Note
| in their purses and using more than one hand turned out to
| not be a big deal to most people if it meant being able to
| see more content/detail on the screen and better battery
| life.
| anyoneworks wrote:
| Idk. Her point that now that phones are maxed out to being
| comfortable for men and have stopped growing really nails
| it. They even having folding ones now, because forcing men
| to have a phone laughably large for their hands just isn't
| an option, whereas it is for women.
| taeric wrote:
| Have phones maxed out? Seems the evidence is inline with
| it basically growing to cannibalize all of the other
| utilities that it is able to replace.
| [deleted]
| plorkyeran wrote:
| That's also just sort of blatantly incorrect. The early
| growth in phablet sales that eventually lead to them
| becoming the normal size for phones was disproportionally
| in _women_.
| klipt wrote:
| That's just standard MO for these think pieces. Anger
| sells.
|
| Corporations: sell things women actually buy.
|
| Journalist: why are these corporations so sexist against
| women? This makes me angry!
| anotherman554 wrote:
| I don't how they chose the dummy size and weight but they seem
| to do crash dummies based on median bodies, not "average"
| bodies, and the researchers who made the female dummy were
| Swedish so presumably wouldn't care about American sizes.
| mythhouse wrote:
| NHTSA uses the word average not median.
| ryeights wrote:
| Median is an average.
| aikendrum wrote:
| In common use average refers to the mean.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| In common use, average means "typical" or "central".
| There isn't one specific statistical meaning.
| kgwgk wrote:
| In this case it doesn't.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| Average can commonly refer to mean, median, or mode
| depending on context. It's good to use "mean" when
| precision is important.
| lukeschlather wrote:
| NHTSA says 50th percentile: https://www.nhtsa.gov/nhtsas-
| crash-test-dummies
| mythhouse wrote:
| Ah Thanks. I was going off the image in the linked
| article
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-62877930
| 988747 wrote:
| So the average American woman looks like a ball chair,
| basically? Something is wrong with your data here :)
| photochemsyn wrote:
| It's one of those bi-modal distributions, I imagine.
|
| Centers For Disease Control:
|
| > "The age-adjusted prevalence of severe obesity among U.S.
| adults was 9.2% in 2017-2018. Women had a higher prevalence
| of severe obesity (11.5%) than men (6.9%)."
| alistairSH wrote:
| The average women's clothing size is now 16 or 18 (up from 12
| or 14 in 2010). It corresponds to about a 38" waist. Average
| height is around 5'4", which has been mostly consistent over
| the last 20 years.
|
| That's shockingly large to me. I knew Americans were obese,
| but wow.
| adrianN wrote:
| I wonder how useful averages are since you can be (almost)
| arbitrarily fat, but die very quickly when you're even a
| little underweight. I guess the minimum waist size for an
| adult female is still double-digit inches, but I wouldn't
| dare guess the maximum waist size.
| noodlenotes wrote:
| In case anyone is curious
|
| > In 2016 in the US, adult women averaged a weight of
| 170.3 lb. The median adult woman weighed 161.3 lb.
|
| > For men in the United States 18 or older in 2016,
| average weight was 197.1 lb. Men had a median weight of
| 189.4 lb.
|
| I guess it makes sense that even the median weight would
| lead to an overweight BMI (assuming average height),
| since 74% of the US is overweight or obese.
|
| [1] https://dqydj.com/weight-percentile-calculator-men-
| women/
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Admittedly I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about
| this or attempting to guess the weight of strangers, but
| this gender breakdown seems a bit odd to me-- in my
| circles and community exposure (west of Toronto), I would
| have imagined that most guys fell into a 180-220 bucket,
| and most women into a 120-150 one.
|
| So it's a bit surprising to see that in these official US
| numbers, men are indeed around that, but women are
| somewhat above it.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Oh yeah, as noted in parallel comments, averages are
| terrible for things like designing airplane cockpits, and
| I imagine crash dummies as well.
|
| Even if there's an unexpected distribution, that's no way
| around there being a massive number of very obese women
| to pull the average to 38".
|
| I thought my wife was pretty normal/average-ish at 5'4"
| and size 6/8, which is a full 10" smaller waist than the
| web is claiming as the average.
| bombcar wrote:
| Note that a 10" shorter waist is only about 1.5" on a
| side (diameter of 9 inches vs 12) which is noticeable but
| not as much as "10 inches" would make you think.
| Blahah wrote:
| That difference is visually absolutely vast - for the
| same height, in most sizing charts, it's approximating a
| 50% increase in body mass.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I was at Boeing when the cockpits were redesigned to
| accommodate women:
|
| 1. lower control forces
|
| 2. shorter legs
|
| 3. shorter bodies (need to see over the dash)
|
| With the lower control forces, Boeing was concerned that
| men would then overcontrol the aircraft, but as far as I
| know this hasn't turned out to be a problem.
|
| Women were not strong enough to handle the control forces
| in WW2 aircraft under emergency conditions. Those
| airplanes were designed around the limit of a man's
| strength.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| You can't get an idea of what Americans are really like by
| watching the media. You have to come here, travel around
| and see for yourself.
|
| Specifically, the media rarely shows fat people. Not the
| truly fat ones, with the exception of the freakshow genre
| of TV specifically about extremely fat people. In recent
| years they've started to show more and more fat people, but
| not nearly fat enough to give you an accurate impression of
| average Americans. Just fat enough to give token
| representation of fatness.
|
| Truth is, the hugely fat people on freakshow TV aren't on
| freakshow TV because they're freakishly fat. People that
| fat are common, you can see them yourself any day at
| walmart. The people on those shows are freaks because they
| have freakishly little shame and agree to be on TV.
| alistairSH wrote:
| I live in the US, but in a "fit" suburb outside DC. I
| guess that skews my perspective a bit.
|
| DC-proper and Arlington VA usually rank highly on most
| fitness rankings. I'm a bit west of there, but generally
| a pretty fit area, I guess.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Even within my middling-fat red-state city, you can see
| _very_ different size distributions traveling to
| different parts of the city. Downtown? Skews young and
| relatively fit. Most 'burbs, and out in our more-diffuse
| second business district? Average weight of an adult is a
| solid 50lb higher than downtown, and probably more like
| 75lb. Poor areas? Everyone seems to be either ruler-thin
| or very fat, young and old alike, in about equal measure.
| That one rich people enclave town with its own country
| club? A glorious place to drive through when the stay-at-
| home spouses are out for their jogs, let me tell you. You
| see the same sort of pattern visiting e.g. a coffee shop
| in that area, so it's not just selection bias of the
| activity of jogging.
|
| Traveling around to various cities, you see this
| variation city-to-city, too. Some cities are just fitter
| (and, in some cases, _way_ "hotter" all around--like you
| gotta re-calibrate your "10" scale, to use a crude but
| illustrative example, or you won't see anyone under a
| back-home "8" your whole visit) than my home city. Others
| are even fatter (largely in the deep South). Though in
| all cases you have to take into account that you may only
| be seeing their equivalent of the "hot" part of town and
| that may be skewing your overall impression.
| yellowapple wrote:
| > Truth is, the hugely fat people on freakshow TV aren't
| on freakshow TV because they're freakishly fat. People
| that fat are common, you can see them yourself any day at
| walmart.
|
| Not really. Truth is, the hugely fat people on freakshow
| TV are pretty rare even in America; if they were at all
| common then there wouldn't be much of a market for such
| shows in the US ("you're just gonna show me ordinary
| people like me? yawn.") You might see one or two hugely
| fat people at Wal-Mart, but they'll be surrounded by
| dozens of people who are plump but otherwise mobile, and
| _they 'll_ be surrounded by dozens of people who are fit
| by European standards.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _You might see one or two hugely fat people at Wal-
| Mart, but they 'll be surrounded by dozens of people who
| are plump but otherwise mobile,_
|
| Have you been to Ohio? That ratio is flipped. "Plump" is
| merely overweight but not obese. In states like Ohio,
| plump seems athletic because the massively obese are very
| common. You can easily see several 500lb people a day,
| fat enough for any TV freakshow.
| Spivak wrote:
| I'm offended as a native Ohioan. This is just not true,
| Ohio's obesity rate is the same as everywhere else. The
| spread between states is tiny. California is a whole 2%
| less obese. What about Ohio do you think magically makes
| people fatter?
| yellowapple wrote:
| > Have you been to Ohio?
|
| Yes. Have you? Because no, that ratio is not "flipped".
| It ain't even flipped in Texas - and _everything_ is
| bigger in Texas.
|
| > several 500lb people a day
|
| Yes, "several" meaning single digits. The average Wal-
| Mart has anywhere from double to _triple_ digits of
| people in it at any one time. All but the tiniest of US
| towns have _quadruple_ or _quintuple_ digits of people in
| them.
|
| Thus, _even by your own accidental admission_ , people in
| the 500lb range are an extreme rarity. This really
| shouldn't be surprising; the human body can only take in
| so much nutrients and can only reduce its energy
| expenditure by so little, so at some point even an
| entirely sedentary lifestyle with an entirely unhealthy
| diet will result in a stopping point far short of 500lb.
| The people you see on TV are that fat because they are
| outliers, not the norm. That's also - again - what makes
| them interesting enough to be worth televising to an
| audience that's already disproportionately obese.
|
| Put differently: if 500lb+ people were the norm, then
| Wal-Mart would sell clothes that actually fit them
| instead of them having to be limited to overstretched
| sweatpants. The fact that Wal-Mart does not should make
| it patently obvious that they are far too small of a
| market segment to be worth catering to, even in the very
| store in which you seem to disproportionately see them.
| yellowapple wrote:
| A 38" waist would make someone about a foot or two wide
| (12.1 inches assuming a perfectly circular waist, but most
| folks' waists are wider than they're "long") - which is
| curvy, sure, but not severely so. Average waist size for
| European women is around 30", for reference - so only a
| couple inches less wide.
|
| Then again, I'm an American male (who wears size 44 pants),
| so needless to say my perspective might be skewed.
| alistairSH wrote:
| A 38" waist is massive on most bodies.
|
| At my current 150lbs and 5'7", I have a <30" waist. When
| I was 180lbs (got fat in college) it was near 38". That
| 30lb difference took me from athletic to obese. Granted,
| I'm male, but I'd think that on a 5'4" women, that 38"
| waist was visibly even larger.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| A simple quadratic model would suggest a 60% weight
| increase of the 38" over the 30". That's enormous.
| yellowapple wrote:
| A "simple quadratic model" is about as appropriate for
| extrapolating human weight from human dimensions as a
| microwave is appropriate for cooking steak.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Average fitness levels vary a lot with region, if you stick
| to a few trendy coastal cities you might get the impression
| that most Americans are fairly fit. But if you travel across
| America a few times, I think you'll find that ball-shaped is
| actually quite common.
| ilyt wrote:
| I wonder at which size it makes more sense to put radius on
| clothing...
| bombcar wrote:
| Even the ideal woman isn't actually a sphere, or even a
| cylinder, no matter what the physicists say.
| yellowapple wrote:
| She is if she's in a vacuum.
| michaelt wrote:
| 170 lbs 5'4" looks like this: https://height-weight-
| chart.com/504-170.html
|
| Certainly not an athletic build, and a borderline-obese BMI,
| but well short of ball chair territory.
| AllegedAlec wrote:
| That's really fat though.
| michaelt wrote:
| While it's not an athletic build, the grandparent poster
| thought it was so high as to call the accuracy of the
| data into question.
|
| While the kind of Americans whose careers put them in
| front of cameras are rarely so mighty, from what I've
| seen of the real American population those photos look
| about average.
| yellowapple wrote:
| Maybe if your only exposure to other humans is Hollywood
| actresses, but in the US those photographed people look
| pretty normal, and in the rest of the world those people
| would be somewhat curvier/plumper than average but not
| unreasonably so.
| AllegedAlec wrote:
| No. Over here I'd call this borderline obese. These
| people are unhealthily fat and it's frankly an indictment
| of the US that people try to sweettalk this sort of
| behaviour with words like 'curvier' and 'plumper'.
| yellowapple wrote:
| > Over here I'd call this borderline obese.
|
| Sorry that we don't all live in towns entirely populated
| by bulemic supermodels. It's frankly an indictment of you
| and numerous other commenters that y'all would look at
| these photos v. the fat people televised for
| entertainment and decide "yes, these are entirely
| indistinguishable and therefore warrant the exact same
| terminology and scorn".
|
| Get a grip.
| AllegedAlec wrote:
| Dude. I never said that they were indistuinguishable.
| There's levels from fat to hambeast to "their movement
| influences tides". That doesn't make the first category
| acceptable.
| yellowapple wrote:
| > Dude. I never said that they were indistuinguishable.
|
| Then why would you police my language and demand I use
| the exact same terminology for a _very_ wide range of
| body sizes /masses?
|
| > That doesn't make the first category acceptable.
|
| And who, pray tell, are you to decide what is or is not
| "acceptable"?
| michaelt wrote:
| To be fair, 170 lbs 5'4" in terms of BMI is right at the
| top of 'overweight' and only 5 lbs (or 1 inch) short of
| 'obese' [1] (although it is well short of 'severely
| obese')
|
| Of course, it wouldn't be good for your dating life if
| you described ~50% of women as 'obese' so it's good
| you've got more sensitive language.
|
| [1] https://bmicalculator.mes.fm/bmi-chart
| bad_good_guy wrote:
| Fatter. Why use euphemisms to avoid using the term "fat"
| when it's literally the case. It shouldn't be considered
| a loaded term, Americans need to admit they're fat
| instead of constantly moving the goalposts
| yellowapple wrote:
| I'm sorry for not using your arbitrarily-preferred
| synonym for "plump".
|
| Like, if you're literally incapable of recognizing the
| difference between those photographs and, say, the folks
| on My 500 Pound Life or whatever "Learning" Channel
| drivel you watch, then maybe you ain't the one to be
| lecturing anyone about "constantly moving the goalposts".
| starkd wrote:
| nharada wrote:
| Your comment is supposed to be sarcastic, but it is still
| pretty limiting to try and cover the entire statistical
| distribution of human bodies with just two crash test
| dummies.
| voxic11 wrote:
| Using only averages can lead to pretty misleading results.
| https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-...
| hirundo wrote:
| Which is a good argument for using a range of test values,
| not for using less representative values.
| kolbe wrote:
| Cars aren't cheap
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| When I worked at Toyota, they used "number of
| Highlanders" equivalence when shaming people for not
| picking up their large format paper schematic prints.
| thfuran wrote:
| Compared to the cost of designing a car then
| manufacturing hundreds of thousands or millions of them,
| a handful of cars are pretty cheap.
| kolbe wrote:
| Depends on how far down you want to go with all the
| people sizes in all the various combinations of
| positions. I imagine the cost-benefit is based on the
| marginal change of information you get by changing the
| dummy size/shape, and based on their revealed behavior,
| they don't think more sizes add more information.
| Tade0 wrote:
| According to this:
|
| https://dqydj.com/weight-percentile-calculator-men-women/
|
| That female dummy would have been in the 24th weight
| percentile, while the male in the 57th _female_ weight
| percentile.
| randomcarbloke wrote:
| exacty, they shoud be testing the heaviest, tallest, and the
| shortest, lightest.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| But how about a tall and light person and short and heavy
| person? The permutations are endless. Not arguing against
| testing, I think it's great to get more test dummies in the
| seat, but I don't know where/how one should draw the line.
| thfuran wrote:
| If you're testing those two dimensions, there are four
| corner cases. It may be that for some reason somewhere in
| the middle is a worse case, but the extremes should
| certainly be tested.
| panda88888 wrote:
| I think somewhere along the lines of 20, 50, and 80
| percentile would work.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| I'm pretty much floored that they haven't been using female
| measured test dummies for years now. Are women's lives really
| valued so cheaply?
| Beltalowda wrote:
| If we look at ~100 years of history with cars, I think it's
| fairly safe to say that no one's lives are especially valued.
| Leaded gasoline was introduced even though the dangers were
| already well understood, it had to take a massive public outcry
| campaign to get car manufacturers to do _anything_ about driver
| safety ( "Unsafe at any speed" and such), pedestrian and
| cyclist safety is still under-prioritized in designs, etc.
| Sakos wrote:
| I think in many aspects of life, sure, but here it could simply
| be something akin to how the US air force realized that the
| idea of "average" seating in jet planes was dangerous and
| completely divorced from reality, driving their push for
| individually customizable seating. I think it's still
| ubiquitous that we measure things that aren't clearly
| generalizable across a wider population, but we think they are.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Yeah, so much so that they live something like 7 years longer
| on average. /s
| shuntress wrote:
| As another comment put it, it is assumed that women are the
| same as "smaller men". So it is more like they are not thought
| of rather than "cheaply valued".
| guerrilla wrote:
| Okay, but you'd think if they were equally valued that they'd
| _check_ , no?
| shuntress wrote:
| It's the difference between:
|
| _" We will run 10 clinical trials testing the efficacy of
| this drug in men and 5 clinical trials testing its efficacy
| in women"_
|
| and _" We will run 10 clinical trials testing the efficacy
| of this drug in men and suggest women take a lower dose"_
| faebi wrote:
| I assume the numbers are even worse for very obese people and
| exceptionally tall people. Are obese dummies in use?
| necovek wrote:
| Tall people (I am 195cm/6'5") generally require bigger cars to
| fit in (European D segment vehicles like BMW 3 series or Honda
| Accord are basically a small city car with barely usable rear
| seats when I am driving), and bigger cars have bigger mass.
| Hopefully electric cars with large cabins like IONIQ 5 are a
| start of fixing this :)
|
| Which is only to point out that types of vehicles would be
| correlated for people on extremes, and certainly a type of
| vehicle matters for crash survivability on average.
| bhelkey wrote:
| The tallest NHTSA crash dummy currently in service is 5'9" and
| 171 pounds [1].
|
| [1] https://www.nhtsa.gov/nhtsas-crash-test-dummies
| SeanLuke wrote:
| If I may be pedantic:
|
| > Compared to men, women are 17 percent more likely to die in a
| car crash and 73 percent more likely to sustain serious injuries
| in a front-end collision. Yet despite these discrepancies, car
| companies are only required to test vehicle safety using crash
| dummies modeled after the average man.
|
| Guinea pigs are 2000% more likely to die in a car crash and
| 10000% more likely to sustain serious injuries in a front-end
| collision. We don't make crash dummies for guinea pigs.
|
| Since to objective is to reduce overall injury, the primary
| justification for a female crash dummy would be based not on the
| probabity of injury if you are a woman, but the probability of
| being a woman if you have received injury. This is of course also
| very high -- and it's great to see female crash dummies, long
| overdue. I'm just irritated at such sloppy writing.
| scarmig wrote:
| It's a bit more complicated than that, not that the article
| you're responding to is particularly nuanced itself. The
| overall goal is to improve material and physical well-being for
| society in aggregate (itself a bit ambiguous, but bear with
| me). Suppose cars being optimized for the male case would
| minimize overall injuries. That will have the side effect,
| however, of dissuading women from driving at the margin,
| compared to a world where cars are optimized for some
| intermediate case. That's deadweight loss, and deadweight loss
| has a real economic and social cost. In the extreme, you could
| imagine a world where there's a net increase of one death in
| exchange for generating billions of dollars. In that non-
| realized world, that'd be an obvious trade off worth making.
|
| Of course, with that different safety optimization target we'd
| then have loss when the marginal male driver chooses not to
| drive. Do they cancel out? At least if we're starting from a
| male-optimized point, small changes in safety policies are
| likely to lead to minimal loss of male drivers (by definition
| of optima; linear terms are zero in the vicinity of a local
| optimum). At that male-focused optimum, however, female drivers
| can potentially drive large social gains by small changes in
| safety policy in their favor (since the safety policy is not
| already optimized for them).
|
| Which is all to say, what's socially ideal is likely somewhere
| between male-optimized and female-optimized, though not
| necessarily near the exact midpoint. And that's all assuming
| that car driving currently is currently male-optimized, which
| I'd question.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| Guinea pigs don't drive cars, women do.
| SeanLuke wrote:
| Did the paragraph say driver?
|
| Even so, when a guinea pig is driving, it is 100000% more
| likely to die in a car crash! The point is, I think, that the
| reporter needs a lesson in Bayes Law.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| >A crash dummy aimed at protecting women drivers
|
| The title of the article that we are currently discussing.
|
| Please don't pretend your comment doesn't exist in the
| context of the discussion it's a reply to, that's somewhere
| between dishonest motte-and-bailey and blatantly bad
| comment etiquette.
|
| (And beyond that, you're not even using a proper
| application of Bayes Law anyway, since "probability of
| injury if you are a woman" _is_ what you should be
| concerned with if you 're building safety devices)
| habinero wrote:
| Thanks for valuing women as highly as guinea pigs.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > women are 17 percent more likely to die in a car crash and 73
| percent more likely to sustain serious injuries in a front-end
| collision.
|
| It makes sense to at least measure the differences and hopefully
| we can find ways to improve overall safety.
|
| However I am automatically wondering a gender disparity in
| outcomes is a simple issue about genetics? Average women are far
| less muscular and are less robust than men, it makes sense given
| the same forces they'd be more damaged than men. Thats going to
| be something you cannot fix (if you distribute the forces more
| evenly then both genders will still have disparate outcomes due
| to structural differences)
|
| One thing that these kinds of articles never seem to address is
| what is an acceptable rate? To illustrate the point with
| arbitrary numbers is a 1% improvement worth $10B ? IDK, but
| that's more of the kind of effort I'd like to see from writers.
| Sander_Marechal wrote:
| IIRC a similar study was done in Europe. The conclusion was
| that women are indeed more likely to die or sustain serious
| injuries, but that the cause of that was that woman, on
| average, drive smaller cars. So, they are more vulnerable in a
| collision.
|
| Just look around you. How often do you see families where the
| man is driving the big fancy SUV and the woman is driving the
| smaller "second" car?
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > Just look around you. How often do you see families where
| the man is driving the big fancy SUV and the woman is driving
| the smaller "second" car?
|
| Maybe it's a regional thing, but around here the big SUV
| replaced the minivan as a "women's car". I hear safety (i.e.
| wanting to "win" in a crash, often phrased exactly like that)
| as a common reason for the choice.
|
| Their husband will drive a similarly-huge truck, usually.
| walthamstow wrote:
| I have heard exactly the same sentiment from women here in
| the UK. Not a single one of the women I have spoken to
| about this realise they are participating in an arms race.
|
| The husband in the UK will more likely drive a fast, sexy
| coupe/hatchback/saloon with a large engine, rather than a
| truck.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| In my experience in America, women prefer huge SUVs while men
| prefer more sporty cars, or trucks. Huge SUVs are slightly
| feminine because they're good for getting the kids to soccer
| practice. SUVs ate the market for vans, another vehicle good
| for moving a bunch of kids around.
|
| That's just my observations. The data might say otherwise.
| watwut wrote:
| > Huge SUVs are slightly feminine because they're good for
| getting the kids to soccer practice
|
| Genuinely, in what way? When I am taking kids somewhere, I
| want car that fits into small parking space. I just dont
| see what SUV would help with.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Unless you're in a downtown urban center, soccer practice
| has plenty of parking space for your ship-sized SUV (for
| that matter, so do downtown parking garages. It only
| becomes an issue with street parking.)
|
| Also you want a car that can fit 7 or 8 kids because you
| take turns with other parents ferrying many kids around,
| not just your own.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| I've lived in suburbs for most of my life and I've never
| seen a park with enough parking spots for everyone having
| practice/a game.
| watwut wrote:
| In most places where I took kids, street parking was what
| I got.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Good at keeping the occupants alive in a collision with
| another giant car. Crash stats are largely for like-on-
| like--good luck with your Ford Focus' decent safety
| rating when you're t-boned by an F-250 :-/
|
| And nobody cares about parking space size out in the US
| 'burbs. Parallel parking's almost non-existent, garages
| uncommon outside the city proper, and spaces are huge and
| plentiful (arguably _too_ plentiful, even allowing for
| car-centric living--a high percentage of it sees almost
| no use at all in a given year)
|
| The size lets you leave all the kids' activity shit in
| the car all the time, so you/they don't forget it at
| home.
| sokoloff wrote:
| In most parts of the US, sports practice areas tend to
| have ample parking. Optimizing for "fits into small
| parking space" is largely a benefit only in cities.
| bombcar wrote:
| SUVs come in all sizes now, and there's some advantage to
| certain sizes.
|
| Most people don't have an array of vehicles to choose
| from except when buying, so they don't really get much of
| a choice between "the car" and "the SUV".
|
| When you have small children a minivan becomes really
| nice, since the doors open wide which helps with car
| seats and booster buckling.
| watwut wrote:
| We had Ford fiesta with one kid and slightly bigger car
| when two kids. No issue with buckling nor car seat.
| bombcar wrote:
| When number of kids > number of rear doors is when it
| gets spicy.
| bombcar wrote:
| In many cases the woman drives the "mom van" (minivan or SUV)
| to shuttle kids around, and the man drives "the car" (usually
| a sedan of some sort) to work and back each day.
|
| With all these studies it's very important to correct for
| various differences and interpret the data. I suspect Volvo,
| for example, has a pretty good idea on these things (because
| they wouldn't compare _all vehicle_ but particular models,
| etc).
| JeremyNT wrote:
| > IIRC a similar study was done in Europe. The conclusion was
| that women are indeed more likely to die or sustain serious
| injuries, but that the cause of that was that woman, on
| average, drive smaller cars. So, they are more vulnerable in
| a collision.
|
| Was the more to it? If they are aware of this fact, it feels
| like it would be trivial to control for it, to determine
| whether women are still more vulnerable in the same types of
| vehicles.
| kulahan wrote:
| I dunno that there's necessarily an acceptable rate so much as
| everyone's just aiming to get the rate to "lower than it is
| now" while keeping costs acceptable and reasonable.
|
| As for: "gender disparity in outcomes is a simple issue about
| genetics?"
|
| There's an easy way to find out!
|
| It might be possible to a small adjustment could help bring the
| disparity down without necessarily increasing the danger to
| men. I think it's worth looking in to (not to imply that you
| were saying it isn't).
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| I suspect you're right. Efforts to make cars safer for women
| will succeed, but at the same time they'll _also_ make cars
| _even safer_ for men. The 'average' man is able to survive
| more physical trauma than the average woman, because the
| average man has denser bones, muscles, etc. Consider that 4x as
| many women than men have osteoporosis. Disparities like that
| will lay a heavy finger on crash data.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> To illustrate the point with arbitrary numbers is a 1%
| improvement worth $10B ?_
|
| The NHTSA uses estimates for "Statistical Value of Life and
| Injuries" and "Value of Travel Time":
| https://www.transportation.gov/regulations/economic-values-u...
|
| For 2021 they value a life at $11.8M:
| https://www.transportation.gov/office-policy/transportation-...
|
| Very roughly, if your 1% improvement cost $10B/y, the NHTSA
| would consider it worth it if it averted at least 847
| (10B/11.8M) annual deaths.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Cool! I never knew that. Thanks for the great comment!
| cameronh90 wrote:
| There are interesting stats from TfL in London. Women make
| approximately 25% of bicycle trips in London, but account for
| about 40% of the fatalities. Yet when you compare KSI (killed
| or seriously injured) by gender, men are more likely to be KSI
| for a given distance travelled.
|
| It's hard to interpret these statistics. I suspect there are
| significant behavioural differences, such as riding at
| different times of day and at different speeds, which account
| for some of the differences.
| drak0n1c wrote:
| Women have less bone density and less muscle mass than men.
| In an equivalent physical trauma situation they are more
| likely to be hurt than men, as both the physical reaction in
| the face of danger is less agile/powerful and the body is
| more fragile. Both of these apply even moreso when
| controlling a bicycle, because of the more direct control
| nuances and the greater force disparity (exposure to cars and
| obstacles around you).
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| Sounds like a classic case of Simpson's paradox [1]. Here's
| how it could work, but I've made everything up so might not
| be true at all - it's just an example of how those numbers
| could exist:
|
| * KSI goes up far less than expected as the journey length
| goes up (less than linearly, and maybe even down slightly
| between some categories). That's because the longer journeys
| are made by much more experienced cyclists - by definition, a
| very unfit cyclist never cycles 25miles, for example.
|
| * But the category of very shortest journeys makes up by far
| the largest proportion of journeys, so a straight unweighted
| averages of KSI across journey length categories would give a
| very unrepresentative view.
|
| * Those women that do cycle tend to be in the lower journey
| length categories because on average, women are less
| physically fit.
|
| In other words, women would tend to be in the relatively more
| dangerous category of shorter journey length. It's not more
| dangerous because it's shorter - it's more dangerous because
| you had to be less fit to be in it in the first place.
|
| Again, note that the above is all made up. But it shows how
| you could get to the contrdictory-sounding stats of the
| parent comment.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > there are significant behavioural differences
|
| And i would bet that normal characteristics of testosterone
| would explain a sizable portion of the difference.
| yafinder wrote:
| Now I wonder what about children? Do they have different dummies
| for different ages and different car seat sizes? If not, what's
| the equivalent of
|
| > women are 17 percent more likely to die in a car crash
|
| > and 73 percent more likely to sustain serious injuries
|
| for children?
| consp wrote:
| There is an average child test for 6 and 10 year dummies at
| NCAP AFAIK.
|
| Car seat sizes should not be relevant as all children should
| have some form of riser/child seat to be properly protected
| (and never front facing on the front seat).
| michaelt wrote:
| According to [1] there are crash test dummies used to represent
| newborn, 12-month, 3-year-old, 6-year-old and 10-year-old
| children.
|
| They also have a 5th-percentile adult female dummy, which is
| closer in height and weight to the 10-year-old dummy than to
| the 50th-percentile-male dummy.
|
| [1] https://www.nhtsa.gov/nhtsas-crash-test-dummies
| uri4 wrote:
| dang wrote:
| We've banned this account for posting too many unsubstantive
| and/or flamebait comments.
|
| If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email
| hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll
| follow the rules in the future. They're here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| dzink wrote:
| A lot of injuries are happening from bottom belts cutting into
| bellies, because people don't know how to position the belt
| properly or the belt doesn't position well for people who have
| bellies (many women over middle age, pregnant women, etc). It's
| not just average height and weight that matters. Soft tissue
| positioning matters a lot. Women tend to accumulate weight in
| hips (pear shape), while men usually do it in the belly, so
| elevated thigh diameter in women when seated pushes the bottom
| belt up onto the belly/soft tissue which then gets cut during an
| accident. Regulators need to surface and approve belt adjusters
| that make seat-belts safer for pregnant and overweight people.
| snshn wrote:
| That's sexist. It implies that women are bad at driving, a known
| stereotype which is not backed by any real statistics (I think).
| watwut wrote:
| How would female crash dummy implied anything about driving?
| golemiprague wrote:
| sgt wrote:
| Sexist would be to imply the female dummies come with builtin
| airbags.
| xchip wrote:
| I think people that don't look exactly like crash test dummies
| are more likely to get injuries
| dmkirwan wrote:
| If you were shocked that this is only happening now, I'd highly
| recommend reading or listening to the book "Invisible Women" by
| Caroline Criado-Perez. She highlights instances of this across
| many industries. I think that it's particularly relevant to
| software engineers, or anybody else who has a chance of
| unintentionally introducing bias into a system.
| prydwen wrote:
| +1, this book was an eye opener and a bit of a slap in the face
| chroma wrote:
| I disagree. If you get to a part of the book where you have
| some knowledge of the industry she's criticizing, it's clear
| how mistaken is. For example, her bit about phone sizes was
| glaringly bad. She thinks that every phone manufacturer is
| sexist and builds large phones which don't work as well with
| women's smaller hands. While the hand size thing is obviously
| true, women prefer larger phones because larger phones have
| better battery life, better hardware specs, and better cameras.
| And since most women carry purses, their phone choice isn't
| constrained by pocket sizes.
|
| If women really did want smaller phones, then the iPhone Mini
| would have sold far more than it did. But phone size is a
| tradeoff, and smaller phones are a niche product due to their
| worse specs. It's as simple as that. No industry-wide sexism is
| involved.
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