Published 07.49
ASKIM. It only takes one push for the whole life to change.
Inventor Astrid Linder took note of that – and created a female crash doll.
– I immediately felt that it was needed, she says.
Suddenly, at low speed, an accident occurs. The woman in the car is hit from behind and with a jerk her head is thrown forward and back. The neck is injured. Perhaps the injuries could have been less severe if the car and seat had been even better designed to protect her.
One who has done something for traffic safety is Astrid Linder, 66, the inventor behind both parts of the male crash dummy and the female crash dummy – also called 50F.
Astrid had two favorite subjects at school – an unusual combo of needlework and math.
After a short technical education, she became a service technician and until 1986 she went around fixing copy machines.
“Always been curious”
After that, she realized that in order to develop, she needed to read further. It was a four-year technical education at komvux, where she really discovered her passion for maths and physics. She then studied technical physics at Chalmers and got a doctoral position in mechanics.
– My strength is probably that I have always been curious. I want to know more than what I already know – all the time, every day. Studying for 15 years was not something I planned, but I went on a whim, says Astrid.
When she became a PhD student, she set about developing a new crash dummy – the average man to be used to test the type of accidents where the neck is injured. The goal was to be able to save people from serious injuries by learning to understand how to prevent them.
“The next logical step”
But Astrid wanted to take one more step. Through a literature search in the library about car accidents, she realized that women had a much greater risk of being seriously injured than men.
– I immediately felt that an average female crash dummy was needed to figure out how to change it. It felt like the next logical step. I probably didn’t realize how much more difficult it would be, she says.
The need was there, but financing it would be more difficult.
She finished her thesis in Australia and since there were job cuts in many places in Sweden, she first lived in England for a while and then returned to Australia for a few more years. She worked with security in the automotive sector.
In 2005, she came home and started at VTI, the Norwegian Road and Transport Research Institute, where she continued with her safety work.
– To measure injuries to the back and neck, complex mannequins with more detailed spines are needed. They are different from the crash dummies that are to be used in head-on collisions and other high-speed collisions, Astrid explains.
On the other hand, it is the regular variants that have always been most important to the car companies because the results in those tests are recorded and give them ratings in various consumer indices such as Euro NCAP.
Mimic human-like movement
Astrid’s female crash doll was developed in several stages. First, studies were required.
– We needed to find out the actual movement pattern and used volunteers who we high-speed filmed and measured with sensors. Both male and female volunteers were used to see differences in how the body reacts.
When the crash dummy was mathematically calculated, it would be manufactured for real and that’s when the creative work began – for example, springs were found that dampened in just the right way to give a human-like movement in the neck.
– Unfortunately, there was no production as we had hoped. The demand did not exist among the car companies’ customers.
Then the team made a larger application to the EU and the models could be completed. Now there was both a male and female crash model.
– They are open source models so all companies can use them. But even so, interest has so far been low. As society does not require these tests to grade cars, it is not interesting from a business perspective, explains Astrid.
She states that if customers do not know which new cars are best or worst for women’s safety, they have nothing to choose or opt out of.
“It requires a change globally”
The car companies put huge resources into development and have to limit themselves to what they think the customers will demand and what the authorities will push, subsidize or maybe punish. And right now, it doesn’t seem to matter how well or poorly you protect women.
– I hope it changes, but it requires a change globally.
As an inventor, she is used to both success and adversity. Curiosity and not a little stubbornness drive her on. There is still much to develop and improve.
Astrid is sure that her first doll model of an average woman has contributed to the effort made by car manufacturers to make good and safe seats.
– I feel that I have been useful.
Facts: Astrid Linder
Age: 66 years
Lives: Askim south of Gothenburg
Is: Inventor, professor of traffic safety at VTI, adjunct professor at Chalmers and at Monash University in Australia.
Hobbies: Sea kayaking and gardening
Created: SET 50F – the first average female crash dummy and its male counterpart.
Named: One of the 100 Most Inspiring and Influential Women in the World 2023 (BBC) and was on the Forbes 50 Over 50 list in 2025
Famous female inventors:
Mary Anderson – invented the windshield wipers
Maraget A. Wilcox – invented the passenger compartment heater for cars
Melitta Bentz – invented the melitta filter
Josephine Cochrane – invented the dishwasher
Herminie Codolles – invented the bra
Anna Connelly – invented the fire escape
Maria Beasely – invented the lifeboat and a machine for making barrels
Hedy Lamarr – invented a communications system for the military
Stephanie Kwolek – invented the super strong material kevlar
Margaret Elois Knight – invented the paper bags that we find in all stores today – the ones with a flat bottom
Maria Christina Bruhn – invented a safe way to store gunpowder which made her Sweden’s first female patent holder.
Eva Ekeblad De la Gardie – discovered that you can use potatoes for brandy and starch.
Laila Ohlgren – invented the technology with the green handset on the mobile phone – that we first dial the number and then press the button to call frees up capacity in the mobile network.
Bette Nesmith Graham – the secretary who invented Tippex. Sold his company for $47.5 million in 1979.
