Women Are More Likely To Be Injured In Car Crashes

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It is universally accepted that one is better off wearing a seatbelt in a car than not, but now it looks like safety belts might also be the source of a serious problem. A new study has found that women who wear seatbelts are at a greater risk than their male counterparts:

“The investigators found that female drivers wearing seatbelts were more likely to be injured than male drivers wearing seatbelts, and that belted female drivers suffered more chest and spine injuries than belted male drivers in comparable crashes.”

Of course this doesn’t mean we should stop wearing seatbelts, but maybe we should take a closer look at why this is happening. The study found that these women’s injuries were caused by “relatively short stature, preferred seating posture and a combination of these factors yielding lower safety protection from the standard restraint devices.”

So, in other words, seatbelts aren’t designed with ladies in mind. Purely on a comfort level, this is patently obvious to anyone with boobs who’s tried to ride in a car for a long period of time, but clearly there are more serious implications. It has to be tricky for car companies to design one seatbelt that works for all body types, but it seems like, in this era of being able to customize everything, we should be able to buy a seatbelt that works for our particular body size and shape.

Study: Car Crash Injury Risk Greater For Women Drivers [USA Today]

Image via RTimages/Shutterstock.

 
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