Maria Weston Coon asked one lingering question about a car accident that forced her to undergo emergency surgery while on her holiday in Ireland. Why do she and her mother get seriously injured, and do the father and siblings who sat in front appear unharmed?
“It was a head-on collision and they were closest to contact,” said Kuhn, now 25. “It was an early clue that something else was going on.”
When Coon returned to Maine, she found an article her grandma had cut out from a consumer report and left it in her bed. While she learned that women are more likely to get injured in a 73% frontal collision, the dummy used by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in vehicle testing dates back to the 1970s and is almost completely modeled from the male body.
Survivors become activists
Kuhn, who has started law school at New York University this fall, took action and established a nonprofit organization. The aim was to raise public awareness and ultimately encourage members of Congress to sign a bill that required the NHTSA to incorporate more advanced female dummies into its test.
The agency has a final word on whether the car is pulled out of the market, and the type of dummy used in its safety tests can affect which one receives the coveted 5-star rating.
“It seems like there’s a simple solution here that allows you to have a crash test dummy that reflects the average woman and man,” Sen. Deb Fisher, a Nebraska Republican who introduced the law in the last two sessions, told The Associated Press.
Senators from both parties have signed Fisher’s “Her Driving Act,” and transport secretaries from the past two presidential administrations have expressed support for updating the rules.
However, for a variety of reasons, the push for new safety requirements has been moving at a slow pace. That’s especially true in the US where much of the research is happening and around 40,000 people are killed each year in car accidents.
The evolution of crash test dummy
The crash test dummy, currently used in NHTSA’s five-star test, is known as Hybrid III, developed in 1978 and modeled after a 5-foot-9, 171-pound man (average size in the 1970s, but about 29 pounds lighter than today’s average). What is known as a female dummy is essentially a much smaller version of a male model with a rubber jacket that represents the breasts. Despite the majority of licensed drivers being female, they are routinely tested in passenger or rear seats, but rarely tested in the driver’s seat.
“What they didn’t do is design crash test dummies with all the sensors in areas where women get injured differently from men,” says Christopher O’Connor, president and CEO of Humanetics Group, based in Farmington Hills, Michigan, who has spent more than a decade developing and refined.
The humanic female dummy, equipped with all the available sensors, costs around $1 million, at about twice the cost of the hybrids currently in use.
However, according to O’Connor, the more expensive dummies reflect a much more accurate gender anatomical differences, such as the neck, collarbone, pelvis and legs.
Such physical dummies are always necessary for vehicle safety testing and are necessary to verify the accuracy of virtual tests, O’Connor said.
Europe incorporated a more advanced male dummy developed by human scientist engineer Thor 50m (based on a 50th percentile male) into its testing procedure shortly after the 2019 crash in Ireland. Several other countries have adopted it, including China and Japan.
However, the model and female version the company uses for comparison, the Thor 5F (based on women in the fifth percentile), has come across skepticism from some American automakers who argue that a more sophisticated device could exaggerate the risk of injury and show off the value of safety features such as seat belts and airbags.
A discussion of whether more sensors mean more safety
19-year-old Bridget Walchesky had to fly to hospital after a crash in 2022, when the 2022 crash killed a friend who was driving near his home in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. While admitting the seatbelt, it is likely that she saved her life, Walchesky said some of the injuries, including her broken collarbone, were the result of her locking too hard.
“Seat belts aren’t actually built for women’s bodies,” Walchesky said. “Some of my injuries, the way the Force hit me, they probably got worse.”
In a statement to the AP, the industry trade group Alliance for Automotive Innovation said that the better way to ensure safety (a top priority) is to upgrade to existing hybrid dummies rather than mandating new ones.
“This can happen on faster timelines and could lead to greater safety than requiring NHTSA to adopt unproven crash test dummy technology,” the alliance said.
Thor Dummies of Cumanetics received a high mark in early testing by the Vehicle Safety Bureau. Using actual crash corpses to compare results, we found that the NHTSA outperforms existing hybrids in predicting almost all injuries, including the head, neck, shoulder, abdomen and legs.
Another review by the Highway Safety Insurance Institute, a research unit funded by auto insurance companies, was far more critical of the dummy’s ability to predict chest trauma in frontal crashes. Despite the vast expansion of the number of sensors, despite the found testing for the insurance system, the male tall dummy was less accurate and limited than the current hybrid dummy.
“It’s not necessarily better,” said Jessica Germakian, senior vice president of vehicle research at IIHS. “You also have to be sure that the data tells you the right thing about how the actual person works in that crash.”
A slow pace to change rules
The NHTSA budget plan promises the development of a female Thor 5F version with the ultimate goal of incorporating it into the test. However, there may be a long wait given that the male version of Thor, adopted in other countries, is still waiting for final approval in the US
A 2023 report by the Government Accountability Office, which conducts the Congressional investigation, cited many “missed milestones” in the development of various crash dummy enhancements in the NHTSA, including the Thor model.
Kuhn admits he is frustrated with the slow process of trying to change regulations. She says she understands why auto companies are resistant to it even though she fears she is being forced to undergo extensive design changes, with more consideration for women’s safety.
“The good news is that they have very skilled engineers and they will understand that,” she said.
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