Cars are rubbish for short people: Part 2
Yes, you're more likely to be injured by an airbag or break a bone if you're small
Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine.
Fran Lebowitz
I am not alone in finding it tough to drive. It appears plenty of other short people do too. There are a whole host of forums and reviews online that discuss what the best makes and models of cars are for those who, like me, are vertically challenged.
Some common problems to consider: sun visors are too high to cover the eyeline of drivers in a lower seat position; while newer models often have height-adjustable steering wheels, the top of the wheel can present a visual obstacle in older cars; the headrest in the seat might not be low enough to properly guard against whiplash in the event of an accident; due to reduced leg length, a short driver could be sitting so close to the air bag that they could be injured by it in a crash.
As this section from a driving safety website notes, the air bag is hardly a piece of soft down to rest your head on, so it’s important it’s position relative to the driver is the right one.
“A 2009 brochure published by the US Department of Transportation National Highway Traffic Safety Administration stated that while seat belts and air bags prevent 75% of head injuries and 66% of chest injuries, a small percentage of people die from injuries caused by the air bags themselves... The one common denominator in all of the deaths was the person’s proximity to the air bag when it opened. Short drivers don’t always have the luxury of moving the seat far enough back for an air bag safety zone. You have to be able to reach the floor pedals to drive.
“On-off air bag switches are recommended if it is not possible for you to maintain a distance of 10’’ between the centre of your breastbone and the air bag,” the site adds. “While 2-3’’ is the primary risk zone, 10 inches allows for a safety margin.
“The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety determined that two out of three short women drivers already position themselves at least 10 inches from the air bag, though the findings did vary depending on vehicle size. They found that 40% of short women driving medium to large vehicles did sit closer than 10 inches, compared to 27% who drove small cars.”
That’s up to four in ten women who could risk injury because they happen to be on the smaller side.
Multiple studies reinforce the link between women being shorter on average and their increased chance of suffering adverse effects from a car crash. The 50th percentile female sits over 6cm closer to the steering wheel than the 50th percentile male, a 1993 study found, a fact which has some significant implications.
According to a 2003 paper from the Vehicle Safety Research Centre at Loughborough University in the UK, drivers less than 160cm (just under 5’3’’) in height have a significantly higher than average probability of sustaining more serious types of head, pelvis, and lower extremity injuries in a collision.
A 1992 study noted that drivers of less than average height in the US showed a 64% increase in the rate of lower extremity fractures - but that still doesn’t seem to have been addressed.
In a strange coincidence, it was a car manufacturer that was the subject of one of the most significant legal rulings relating to workplace discrimination and employee height. In 2005, the Swedish Labour Court found that Volvo was guilty of indirect sexual discrimination by rejecting a female job applicant for being too short.
Volvo argued that as its assembly lines had evolved, the risk of getting hurt was higher for shorter people. It supposedly had statistics to back up how the increased tendency for tasks to be done at shoulder height and above could impact its workers, citing them as the reason the company had demanded a certain height for its employees.
Volvo, however, didn’t convince the judge that being a given height was “appropriate or necessary” to avoid being harmed at work. The rejected applicant came in 3cm below the 163cm threshold - something that would happen to a quarter of the female working population, and only 1% to 2% of the male working population.
The car maker wasn’t intentionally discriminatory on the basis of gender when it enforced the policy, but still ended up paying damages, and was told that it should not put an automatic height floor on the company’s recruits. Instead, it should judge individuals on their physical capacities.
Next time, some more everyday obstacles you might not have thought about unless you’re vertically challenged. Stay tuned, and share away!