Human body finite element (FE) models are used in pedestrian protection and occupant safety simulations. These human models are normally only available in standard occupant and pedestrian postures. These postures may not be adequate for all crash scenarios, and this limits the usability of human body models FE in the future. Due to detailed modeling of skin, flesh and ligaments in the human FE model, the positioning technique of human body is entirely different and much more complex than that of dummy models and current methods do not offer easy and quick positioning of human models. This paper focuses on the development of a general‐purpose positioning tool as well as the use of kinesiology to achieve anatomically correct postures of the human model. The positioning requires a mesh smoothing step which is realized using a local dual kriging approach. Scientific knowledge of joint kinematics is essential to achieve anatomically correct postures which are obtained from kinesiology. The findings of kinesiology are incorporated into the positioning tool to reduce the user dependency in achieving anatomically correct postures. The tool facilitates the generation of anatomically correct postures quickly. This paper describes the positioning method in more detail and gives some practical examples of posture change.