Tech Decoded — THOR-05F: the first true female crash test dummy and what it means for automotive safety

Since the dawn of crash testing, passive safety has been designed around a man. Not a generic human being — a man. The THOR-05F changes that for the first time. And what it reveals about the blind spots of the past decades is hard to swallow.

• For 50 years, the reference dummy for frontal crash tests was calibrated to the build of a 1960s American soldier — women were represented by a scaled-down version of the same male model
• The THOR-05F incorporates, for the first time, truly female anatomy: pelvis, chest, flexible spine and more than 150 sensors — where the old dummy could neither twist nor measure the loads on internal organs
• It is not yet required in regulatory testing — it is not expected to enter evaluation programs before 2027 or 2028

Fifty years of crash test history

The reference male dummy used in frontal crash tests since the 1970s represents a 50th-percentile man whose build matches that of a 1960s American soldier.

It defined how seatbelts are designed, how airbags deploy, and how cabin structures absorb the energy of an impact.

The “female dummy” introduced in the early 2000s wasn’t really one. It was the same male dummy, shrunk down — roughly 1.52 m and 50 kg — with a chest added.

The Hybrid III 5th percentile, as it is called, descends directly from a dummy designed by General Motors in the 1970s. In other words, female representation in crash testing was a small man with a foam chest.

The collision data, meanwhile, has never lied. At equal crash severity, women are injured more than men. The risk of serious injury in a frontal collision is 73% higher for a female occupant than for a male occupant.

The risk of death for a female driver or front passenger is 17% higher than for a man sitting in the same seat. And yet, testing continues with the same dummies.

Below, the additional injury risk (%) for women compared to men, according to NHTSA.

What the THOR-05F actually does differently

THOR-05F stands for Test device for Human Occupant Restraint, 5th-percentile female variant. In concrete terms: 49 kg, 151 cm standing, 81 cm seated.

But it is not the dimensions that matter here — it is what is inside.

It carries more than 150 sensors that measure internal loads on the organs. An anatomically female pelvis — more rounded — that interacts differently with the seatbelt. A chest integrated into the structure, not added on the surface. A flexible spine capable of twisting and bending laterally.

The old dummy did none of that. NHTSA rates the THOR-05F’s biofidelity as “excellent” at the neck and shoulder — where the old dummy was rated “poor”.

What this concretely changes for automakers: crash test results will differ from current assumptions and will most likely force changes to certain safety and structural equipment.

The caveat that still deserves mention

The -05F designation itself spells out a limit: 5th percentile. That represents the smallest 5% of women. Not the average woman. Not the other 95%.

Astrid Linder, the Swedish researcher who led the European work on the subject, is blunt about it: in her view, this dummy does not represent the female share of the population. Her team developed the SET 50F, the first physical dummy based on the morphology of the average woman. In Europe, Volvo has been using female dummies in crash testing since 1995. Thirty years ahead on this question.

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And for us, what does it actually change?

Not much in the short term. The THOR-05F was unveiled by the U.S. Department of Transportation at the end of 2025, but it is neither required nor used in federal testing for now.

Its integration into new-vehicle evaluation programs is not expected before 2027 or 2028. And each unit can cost more than a million dollars, which does not speed things up.

Here at home, Canada’s Motor Vehicle Safety Standard largely mirrors the American one, and Transport Canada usually conducts its tests in collaboration with NHTSA.

The dummy itself is technically ready. Its real-world effect will depend on regulation: as long as mandatory testing does not require valid results for both body types, an automaker is under no obligation to design beyond the single male template.

Fifty years after the first frontal crash tests, a dummy designed to represent an adult woman now exists. For the moment, it is not part of any mandatory test.