If a recent column on The Washington Post website is correct, it’s still a man’s world — even when it comes to traffic fatalities.
The column, by former Republican congresswoman Susan Molinari and former professional services firm executive Beth Brooke, observes this: “More than 40,000 Americans are projected to die in automobile crashes this year — a crisis, according to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Importantly, those deaths are not suffered equally.
“While men are more likely to cause crashes, women are more likely to die in them. When compared with a male crash victim, a woman is 17% more likely to die, according to a study conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and 73% more likely to be seriously injured in a vehicle crash, according to a 2019 University of Virginia study.”
The authors believe one reason this occurs is that most of the crash test dummies are male. Many female crash test dummies, instead of taking into account physiology differences, are simply smaller versions of the male dummies.
Molinari and Brooke note that ever since automakers have used dummies to test vehicle safety devices, the proportions were based on an average-sized man.
“A five-star safety rating for a car or truck means it was highly rated for a 5-foot-9-inch, 170-pound man,” they wrote. “We have much less information on how safe a car might be for a 5-foot-2-inch, 110-pound woman.”
They note that men and women have different bone densities, and women’s abdomens are in a different location in the car seat than men’s. Women also are more likely to sit closer to the steering wheel and therefore suffer more serious whiplash injuries if they are in an accident.
The man-focused crash testing has continued despite new female-based dummy designs that allow better measurements of injuries to a woman’s face, chest, abdomen and pelvis.
The big mystery, Molinari and Brooke say, is that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s voluntary program still only requires that male dummies be in the driver’s seat for several important crash tests.
The agency already has the authority to order automakers to use up-to-date dummies, including those representing women. It also can order the companies to run tests with both male and female dummies in the driver’s seat.
It’s puzzling why more aggressive action isn’t being required — unless the automakers are lobbying against it, which is hard to believe because that strategy would undercut the commitment to safety improvements they’ve been advertising for the past several years.
But if the number of annual traffic deaths is a crisis, as the transportation secretary has described it; and if women have a noticeably higher chance of being injured or killed in an accident, what is everybody waiting for?
If the NHTSA isn’t going to insist on expanded crash testing, then automakers simply ought to do more of it on their own.
— Jack Ryan, McComb Enterprise-Journal
