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Comment by Merrill | Hacker News Reader

>For a long time, adult NHSTA and IIHS tests used a 1970s 50%-ile male dummy, which is 5'9" and 171lbs. ... >For reference, in 2019, the average weight of a U.S. adult male was 198 lbs and the average weight of a U.S. adult female was 171 lbs.

So the average mass of the American male has increased 15% in 50 years! No data on whether he is taller, but I'd bet the BMI has gone up.

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Referencing the same line, I remember seeing another article on HN somewhat recently about the downside to taking averages of a human to fit specs since the "average"(mathematical mean of measurements) human never existed in reality. Something about fitting pilots to a cockpit?

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/on-average/

These "average" cars have pretty terrible seat backs if you happen to be taller than the average. Outright destructive to the spine.

Over 70% of adult Americans are overweight or obese, according to BMI. Of course, BMI is an imperfect measure, but you're quite right to bet on the average American male having gotten fatter, not taller.

At 5'9" and 171 lb, the old 1970s dummy has a BMI of 25.2 and is already "overweight" (probably because of the heavy steel they have to build it around).

My main takeaway from Dan's article is that we have a lot of blind spots in our view of car crash safety, mostly for lack of samples, and also because the American consumer just doesn't care enough about safety during the buying process to demand better information.

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