THOR-5F (right) is a more advanced dummy model that simulates small adult females in front-impact crash tests and that is at the top of advocates’ and lawmakers’ wanted list.
Francis Chung/POLITICO
“Why they aren’t moving ahead? I don’t know,” she said. “But we’re going to keep pressuring them to.”
A March 2023 report by the Government Accountability Office observed that for at least 20 years, NHTSA has known about greater crash risks to females and others “but has taken incomplete action” to address them.
That same report found that NHTSA doesn’t have a plan that comprehensively addresses existing risks to various demographic groups, or the gaps in information provided by crash test dummies, and recommended it create one.
NHTSA agreed, saying in a statement that “gender disparities in outcomes of traffic crashes are unacceptable and NHTSA is dedicated to solving this problem using all the tools we have.”
But Molinari said what’s happening at the agency is “a little bit of inertia.”
“They instituted the first male crash test dummy and thought that was significant and all that really was needed,” Molinari said. “There was an issue of resources, which is unforgivable.”
NHTSA’s notice of proposed rulemaking on “significant upgrades” to its New Car Assessment Program, which produces consumer vehicle safety ratings, does not include deploying THOR-5F dummies — a disappointment for advocates who saw it as an opportunity for the agency to make good on its word. Meanwhile, the agency has active rulemakings on the THOR-50M and WorldSID-50M models, more advanced dummies that represent an average adult male.
In the meantime, NHTSA uses female dummies that GAO called slimmed-down versions of male dummies, which are problematic because they don’t accurately reflect some aspects of female anatomy, such as less muscle mass and lower centers of gravity. In particular, GAO said the current crop of dummies doesn’t provide data on injuries to lower legs — which women are 80 percent more likely than men to sustain in a crash, according to NHTSA’s own data.
“Crash test dummy development is a complex and lengthy process requiring a cooperative approach between NHTSA and dummy manufacturers, involving numerous design iterations aimed at refining accuracy and precision to best reflect actual human kinematics and resulting injury measures in a crash,” the agency said on in an interim report to Congress.
The agency has also faced criticism for how it designs its tests, which it configures to reflect real-world crash data: NHTSA doesn’t test female dummies in the driver’s seat in frontal crashes for its New Car Assessment Program.
In some crash tests, “they don’t even attempt to test car safety on the female body. This is part of why crashes injure and kill women at higher rates than men,” Fischer said in an April 20 floor speech criticizing the Biden administration’s push to get more Americans behind the wheel of electric vehicles.
NHTSA does test female dummies in the driver’s seat under its Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards program, which sets minimum safety requirements for any vehicle manufactured or sold in the United States.