Happy Friday, Rulers! I recently came back from two weeks visiting Japan, and I’m so excited about fall in the city now that I’m back. Any recommendations on fun DMV-area fall activities? Send them my way. This week, I’m taking a deep dive into how women are underrepresented in the world of automotive safety and how advocates, experts and members of Congress are working to change that. Let’s get into it. Car crashes are a fact of life — the average American driver will be involved in three to four car accidents in their lifetime. But if you’re a woman, your chances of walking away unscathed from an accident are much, much lower: Studies show women are more likely to be seriously injured or die in car accidents than men. In Congress, a bill is gaining momentum that could change that. Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) introduced S. 4299 — the She DRIVES Act — earlier this year, and now eight more senators have signed on as co-sponsors. The act would require the Transportation Department and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to use the most advanced crash testing technology available — including a female crash test dummy. Automotive safety has improved over the decades, but experts say more needs to be done to protect women behind the wheel in the U.S. Women make up the majority of drivers and are responsible for fewer accidents than their male counterparts. But they are 17 percent more likely to die in a car crash and 73 percent more likely to be seriously injured in a crash than men are. Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.) and Democratic Sens. Tammy Duckworth (Ill.) and Patty Murray (Wash.) signed on to co-sponsor when the legislation was introduced. Blackburn tells Women Rule she first became aware of the gender disparities in automotive safety after reading a 2023 Government Accountability Office report outlining the “deficiencies in crash testing” conducted by the NHTSA. “We asked NHTSA to update their standards, and still they’ve really held off on pushing forward on any accurate data and technology [or] taking a new approach to this,” she says. NHTSA’s New Car Assessment Program is at the center of the issue. The program conducts crash testing for the majority types of accidents in the U.S.: side, rollover and frontal — also known as head-on — collisions. The tests are done so the NHTSA can provide information about car safety and crash protection to consumers. The program currently does not require female crash test dummies in the driver seat for head-on collision testing, which the Transportation Department says are the most harmful types of crashes. “A really important thing to remember is that [the NHTSA] is not testing any kind of female crash test dummy in the driver’s seat for most fatal crashes,” says Maria Weston Kuhn, founder of Drive US Forward, a nonprofit working to raise awareness of the issue. Kuhn tells Women Rule that the act is an important step in ending gender discrimination in the world of automotive safety and that the issue is personal to her and her family. “I am a car crash survivor,” she says. “My family and I were on Christmas vacation in December 2019, … and we were driving down a winding, countryside road. All of a sudden, an oncoming car cut into our lane … and hit us head-on. Thankfully, we all survived, but my mom and I suffered really severe injuries.” Kuhn says she had to have life-saving surgery and take a semester off from college to recover. NHTSA currently has two female crash test dummies in service. One, the 5th percentile adult female, is 4’11” tall and weighs 108 pounds. The second female dummy, the small adult female, is also 4’11” tall but weighs 97 pounds. CDC data indicates that the average woman over the age of 20 is around 5’3” and around 170 pounds. “[The dummy] is the size of a 12-year-old boy,” Kuhn says. “I don’t know about you, but I am not those measurements.” “The agency’s current crash test dummies range in size, sex and age to represent a small-sized female, a mid-sized male and different aged children,” NHTSA spokesperson Lucia Sanchez says in a statement. The agency adds that the use of their adult male dummy and 5th percentile adult female dummy in testing “covers a wide range of occupants and has been critical in lowering the differential in safety outcomes between female and male occupants.” In her emailed statement, Sanchez explains that NHTSA has been working on developing a female crash test dummy to address injuries in side-impact crashes. She also pointed to a 2022 study from NHTSA which found the "relative fatality risk difference between females and males has been significantly reduced for newer versus older vehicles." Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, along with other advocacy groups, also are pushing for improved crash test technology. Support for the She DRIVES Act has also ramped up since Congress returned from its summer recess. In July, Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) signed on as co-sponsors. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) also signed on this week. Former National Highway Traffic Safety Administrator Joan Claybrook, Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the National Safety Council have also urged Congress to advance the legislation. Blackburn adds that she and her colleagues are hopeful for a markup at the end of the month that could lead to the She DRIVES Act advancing. “We’re hopeful that there will be a Commerce Committee markup the last week of September,” she says. “And we anticipate if we get that markup, that this bill will be included.” Others suggest that adding female crash test dummies is not enough. “It’s a real challenge that’s not unique to women,” Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s Vice President of Vehicle Research Jessica Jermakian says. “Crash test dummies are a very sophisticated but crude tool.” Jermakian tells Women Rule the IIHS — a nonprofit organization funded by private automotive insurance companies — started conducting their own crash testing in the 1990s to fill gaps found in NHTSA’s testing. “There are still limitations on how human-like [crash test dummies] can be because of the nature of how they need to be designed,” she says. “We are trying to measure injury with a tool that, by definition, we don’t want to be injured. We have to be able to test it over and over again.” According to Jermakian, there’s another, more reliable way to protect women on U.S. roads: computer simulations. Simulations can provide information on crash testing with a variety of different occupants and body types, Jermakian says. “While we will always have physical testing, there are limitations for how much physical testing we can actually do,” she says. “There are limited hours in the day, days in the week … but when you move into the realm of simulation, there’s an opportunity to look at more variables and evaluate different aspects of people involved in the crash.” NHTSA is working on computer model testing as well, according to Sanchez. “NHTSA is completing significant research to support other efforts to improve crash outcomes for people of all sexes and sizes,” Sanchez says in statement. “These efforts include the development of computer models of humans that represent occupants of various sizes, sex and ages, as well as the development of an average female human body model.” Jermakian says the She DRIVES Act has already been beneficial because of the attention it’s drawn to the issue. Now, she says, there’s “a lot of focus on improving the methodologies and ways that we’re able to evaluate [crash testing].”
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