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THIS IS THE Road Safety Authority Ireland’s new ad campaign, highlighting the dangers of wearing your seat belt incorrectly in the event of a collision. The ad targets women, after a recent survey that the RSA conducted has shown that a third of their female respondents admitted not wearing their seat belt correctly. Half of the respondents also said they had witnessed their female friends wearing seat belts incorrectly.

What’s the problem with that?

The problem here is that this ad features a model posing in and around a car, making the implication that the reason women are wearing seat belts incorrectly is due to their unbearable vanity.

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In reality, the results overwhelmingly showed that the main reason women aren’t wearing seat belts properly, is simply that seat belts are not designed with women in mind. 49% said they wear seat belts under their arm to relieve neck irritation and 47% said it was for general comfort.

Since crash test dummies were first required in America in the 1960s, they only used dummies that were 5’9″ and 172lbs, representing the average male body. It wasn’t until 2011, that crash test dummies which were supposed to represent the female body were brought into use.

Great right?

No, actually. These oddly petite female crash test dummies are 4’11″ tall and weigh 108lbs. This would make sense if the majority of drivers were in sixth class but in the world we live in, that is pretty far off the average height and weight of an adult woman.

So what about safety testing for people between those two heights?

Well, people between the height of 4’11″ and 5’9″ weighing between 108-172lbs are not being considered properly in the testing of cars to meet safety regulations. This explains why seat belts are not designed with the comfort of women, who sometimes have boobs and often happen to be shorter than 5’9″, in mind. Evidently, many woman find that seat belts don’t always rest comfortably on their bodies.

The RSA don’t seem to care at all that women are finding seat belts uncomfortable. Rather than focusing on how seat belts could be made more accommodating for women, the campaign just asks “sure what would women want to be comfortable for?”

Car journeys are not always “just a few moments” of discomfort. Have you seen how much car insurance costs? People aren’t forking out that much just to go for a spin around the estate. People need to drive back and forth to work, which with the way our roads accommodate traffic, could potentially mean hours. Not to mention some women’s careers involve driving all day.

Inexplicably, the survey also asked how many women wore their seat belts incorrectly to protect their fresh spray tans

Indeed 7% did admit to doing this. Rather than feeling shocked at how vain and ridiculous women are because of this figure, consider this: They may well have just been part of the 28% of underarm seat belt-wearers who believe it to be safe practice.

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A further 57% said that they had been encouraged to wait in the beauty salon until their tan had dried before driving. This means that 43% are not being warned by salons. It is also important to remember that very few women actually get spray tans more than a handful of times per year, if even. So targeting women based on their suggested vanity will really do very little to prevent injuries in the long run.

The obvious solution here should be for the RSA to look at ways to help reduce the irritation and discomfort that causes the majority of women who are wearing seat belts incorrectly to do so. After all, these are the leading reasons why women won’t wear seat belts properly. To ignore these reasons and suggest it is narcissism that is causing women to be injured rather than car companies ignoring women in the design process is very odd.

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