Nonprofit Drive US Forward is advocating for the passage of a federal bill that would create better safety tests for female drivers.

The “She Develops Regulations In Vehicle Equality and Safety (DRIVES) Act” was introduced in May by Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Nebraska). It would require the Secretary of Transportation to issue a rule centered on collecting crashworthiness information under the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s New Car Assessment Program.

The bill was referred to the Senate’s Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation in May. Congress hasn’t taken any further action since.

A one-pager about the bill cites data from the University of Virginia Charlottesville’s Center for Applied Biomechanics which found that females are at greater risk of abbreviated injury scaled (AIS) 2+, meaning moderate to serious, and AIS 3+ meaning serious to severe, when compared to males.

“For belted occupants in frontal collisions, substantial reductions in injury risk have been realized in many body regions in recent years,” the researchers wrote. “Risk reduction in the thorax has lagged other body regions, resulting in increasing prevalence among skeletal injuries in newer model year vehicles (especially in the elderly). Injuries also remain common in the arm and hand/wrist for all age ranges studied. These results provide insight into where advances in the field have made gains in occupant protection and what injury types remain to be addressed.”

In a recent interview with Streetsblog, Drive US Forward founder and president 24-year-old Maria Weston Kuhn talked about her organization’s effort to drum up support for using crash test dummies based on the female body.

She shared how she and her mother were severely injured in a car crash. She cited a Consumer Reports article her grandmother sent to her while she was recovering.

Published in October 2019, Consumer Reports found at the time that because American cars aren’t safety tested with accurate female crash test dummies women are 17% more likely to be killed and 73% more likely to be severely injured than men in the same crash.

“I remember at the time being really distressed because the injuries that the article described that are most common for women to suffer were exactly what my Mom and I had,” Weston Kuhn told Streetsblog.

“As soon as I read that article I knew that I wanted to do everything I could to help. I began researching the issue, writing about it, meeting with other survivors online and doing everything I could to make sure nothing like what happened to us happened to other people.”

Data from crash tests not only help OEMs to develop safely designed vehicles and collision prevention systems but is also more evidence for collision repairers to point to when explaining to customers and insurers why they’re following OEM repair procedures since doing so preserves crashworthiness. 

In December 2021, Humanetics President and CEO Chris O’Connor told the New York Times car safety features used over the last 50 years — from seatbelts to air bags and dashboard size — have largely been based on the average 1970s man. Humanetics is a company that develops precision safety systems, simulation models, ergonomic software, and advanced sensor technologies. On the company’s website, several dummies of various sizes more realistic to today’s passengers are pictured.

Humanetics engineer Sarah Michaud told CNBC in March 2022 that “nothing in the car’s safety is really geared towards us [women].”

“None of our injuries are being accounted for,” she said. “We are 17% to 19% more likely to die in the same accident as a man and 73% more likely to be injured. That’s because we’re not testing for a woman so we have to move towards this to make sure that we’re not putting women in danger.”

During her interview with Streetsblog, Weston Kuhn criticized NHTSA’s use of Humanetics’ “shrunken-down” Hybrid III 50th Male design, which is 4-foot-11 and 108 pounds, to represent women.

NHTSA states on its website that the dummy represents a 5th-percentile adult female. It also states that it uses a 4-foot-11, 97-pound dummy to represent a female. Both male dummies represent men in the 50th percentile range.

“When I say ‘shrunken-down male,’ I mean the dummy has the internal morphology of a male body — it doesn’t have correct female bone mass, bone structure, musculature, fat distribution, organ distribution, anything like that — that all have really serious consequences on how a body reacts to force in a collision,” she said.

Weston Kuhn noted the bill wouldn’t mandate the use of a specific crash test dummy, allowing for “continued adoption of improved dummies as the technology gets better.”

“There is an advanced female crash system currently working its way through NHTSA approval,” she told Streetsblog. “The most advanced female dummy at this time is called the THOR-5F. It’s been in production and development by NHTSA since 2003. It was approved as biofidelic in November 2020, which means that it actually reacts like a woman’s body would to force.

“Unlike the Hybrid III-Fifth, it actually is modeled after the body of people assigned female at birth. While NHTSA has been developing this dummy for over 20 years, it has been historically reluctant to commit to testing in the New Car Assessment Program, and specifically testing it in the driver’s seat.”

Images

Featured image: A group of “next-generation” Humanetics female crash test dummies. (Provided by Humanetics)