Crash test dummies focused on male body putting women at risk, report says

A mobile billboard from the group Verity Now has been circling the Department of Transportation in Southeast D.C. throughout the week.

"No one seems to care enough to take action," said Maria Weston Kuhn, adding she didn’t even realize there was an issue until she was in a head-on crash while on vacation with her family in Ireland.

Kuhn said her small intestine was pinned between her seatbelt and her spine, causing it to burst.

"Once I got home there was a letter waiting for me from my grandmother," Kuhn told FOX 5 Wednesday. "She had cut out an article from the magazine ‘Consumer Reports’ detailing this issue."

The article, titled "The Crash Test Bias: How Male-Focused Testing Puts Female Drivers at Risk," was published in 2019. It detailed how most crash test dummies represent an average adult male, despite a University of Virginia study that found a seatbelt-wearing woman is 73% more likely to be seriously injured in a frontal car crash than a man.

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"Because seatbelts are designed for the male body, they don’t fit the female pelvis quite right," Kuhn explained. "And so because of that, when we were hit head-on, the force of the accident, instead of being caught by the pelvic bone as a seatbelt is designed to, it rode up onto the flesh of my abdomen."

Kuhn isn’t the only one calling for change. A mobile billboard from the group Verity Now has been circling the Department of Transportation in Southeast D.C. throughout the week. It reads, "You could learn a lot from a (female) dummy. It’s time to put women in the driver’s seat."

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Dozens of Democratic lawmakers also sent a letter to the Department of Transportation (DOT) in February, writing "the absence of female crash test dummies in the current crash test system" needs to change.

"Women are dying unnecessary deaths every day in car crashes, and the government has both the knowledge and power to change it today," Kuhn added.

Requests for comment from both DOT officials and an automotive trade group weren’t immediately answered.

There are some female dummies currently being used during crash tests, however, critics contend they’re basically just scaled-down versions of the male dummies and are insufficient.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) told FOX 5: 

"Safety is the top priority for the U.S. Department of Transportation and NHTSA, and equity in safety is central to our mission for all drivers and occupants. The agency uses both the 50th percentile male and 5thpercentile female crash test dummies in both the compliance and consumer information programs to ensure that vehicle manufacturers design and produce vehicles for crash protection for a wide range of occupant sizes and for targeted occupants at risk when involved in a crash. 

"Recent data on vehicles that were designed after NHTSA adopted use of the 5th percentile adult female test dummies in our vehicle standards and NCAP help confirm that there has been a significant reduction in the difference observed in fatality risk between male and female occupants including in comparable crashes. The data indicates that current regulations and NCAP have improved safety for all vehicle occupants and appear to have also significantly reduced gender disparity in crash outcomes.  NHTSA continues to examine data to evaluate remaining gender disparities in fatality and injury outcomes and to determine how to eliminate them. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will allow NHTSA to accelerate research to evaluate remaining gender disparities in fatality and injury outcomes and determine how to eliminate them."