In this case, it's an argument that crash testing should be more expansive and thorough.

For example, if engineers are going to position the driver and passenger airbags for optimal crash test performance, we probably shouldn't just be testing with a male dummy in the driver's seat and a female dummy in the passenger's seat, as in the modern age women often drive.

If engineers are strictly designing to the test, there should be a suite of repeats, putting dummies that are male, female, fat, thin, tall and short in every seat.

>By and large that doesn’t seem to be a big issue for crash tests.

Source? The article provides data as a counterpoint:

>Check to see if crash tests are being gamed with hyper-specific optimization looking at what happens when new tests are added since that lets us see a crash test result that manufacturers weren't optimizing for just to get a good score

The problem is that they're optimizing for a very specific crash tests. Optimizing for those alone may involve trade offs for other tests. Doing super well for an offset head on collision at 30mph may involve adding weight and supports that make things worse for a collision at an angle.