Crash Test Dummies Made Cars Safer (for Average-Size Men)

Dummies Used In Motor Vehicle Crash Tests Favor Men And Put Women At Risk, New Report Says

The Crash Test Bias: How Male-Focused Testing Puts Female Drivers at Risk

High-tech female crash test dummies could improve car safety. Why aren't they in use?

Proposed 5-star safety rules give short shrift to women drivers

Women are 73% more likely to die or get seriously injured in car crashes.

Buttigieg can save women’s lives

Why vehicle crash tests only use male dummies

Injury Vulnerability and Effectiveness of Occupant Protection Technologies for Older Occupants and Women

The Economic and Societal Impact Of Motor Vehicle Crashes

Vulnerability of Female Drivers Involved in Motor Vehicle Crashes: An Analysis of US Population at Risk

Males have larger skeletal size and bone mass than females, despite comparable body size

Initial Biofidelity Comparison Between THOR-05F and Hybrid-III 5th Percentile Female ATDs

Biofidelity Report of the THOR 5th Percentile Anthropomorphic Test Device

THOR 5TH Percentile Female ATD Design

THOR-5F The New Generation of Female Test Device

DOT Should Take Additional Actions to Improve the Information Obtained from Crash Test Dummies

According to a new study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), crash test dummies used to gauge the safety of cars do not accurately represent certain groups, including women, older adults, and individuals with high weight. This makes it more difficult to ensure vehicles are safe for all people, according to the report.

Study: Crash Test Dummies Do Not Properly Represent People of All Genders, Ages, and Sizes

Congress wants the Biden administration to move faster on addressing the gender gap in vehicle crash testing — something safety advocates have urged for years amid soaring traffic fatalities. The crash tests that regulators use to rate vehicles’ safety don’t use female test dummies in the driver’s seat in a key test, and in the tests where they are used, the dummies are less-accurate, scaled-down male versions. Advocates say the discrepancy means that hundreds of women needlessly die in crashes every year.

Congress prods Biden administration on female crash dummies

Crash testing is an important part of automotive development. It helps carmakers understand how varying impacts will affect passengers, and gives them pointers on how to improve a car’s safety features. But while the world might have got its first female crash test dummy late last year, here in the U.S. the tests don’t fairly demonstrate the safety concerns for most of the population.

U.S. Crash Test Dummies Don't Reflect the Population, Report Claims

Women and older people are being failed by our crash test dummies, according to the US Government Accountability Office. The GAO has just published a new report on the topic and is concerned that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has not done enough to fill knowledge or research gaps that would make our vehicles safer for those more-vulnerable classes of occupants. Consequently, the GAO is recommending that NHTSA create a comprehensive plan to improve that crash test dummy data.

We need better crash test dummies, says Government Accountability Office

Drive US Forward is a Gen Z non-profit working together to end gender discrimination in transportation. We educate and empower young people across the country in the fight to end fatal inequities in crash safety testing.

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Women are more likely to be seriously injured in a crash and experts say crash test dummies designed with only the male body in mind could be part of the problem.

How modern female crash test dummies could save lives

Thank you for your letter expressing concern regarding gender-based disparity in vehicle crash safety and the rulemaking to incorporate the advanced 5th percentile female crash test dummy (THOR-05F) in federal regulations. Your letter was forwarded to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) for response. We appreciate this opportunity to provide information on NHTSA’s efforts to update its crash test dummies to the most technologically advanced models available.

NHTSA Response to Ms. Kuhn and Cosigners

I was struck like being blindsided by a car pulling out nowhere when I read an article in my alma mater’s magazine about the fact that U.S. auto crash-test standards are tailored to men’s bodies.

The piece talked about a female graduate, severely injured in a 2019 crash along with her mother in the back seat of a rental car while her father and brother were unharmed in the front seat, learning sometime later that crash-test dummies are based on an average man’s body. That body shape has led to decades of auto-safety design being based on how men are affected in crashes but not women.

Make Women Safer Behind the Wheel

In a letter to Secretary Buttigieg, supporters express their deep disappointment in the delay, and “encourage [NHTSA] to take action to end the fatal gender-based disparity in car crash safety testing standards before September 2024.”

“As proven by decades of studies by the Department of Transportation (DOT), the Government Accountability Office (GAO), universities, and more, current government crash safety testing standards are inadequate and dangerous,” the letter writes.

Olympian, Activists, Transportation & Design Leaders, Crash Victims, Call on Department of Transportation Secretary Buttigieg to Make Cars Safe for Women

Join NSC on December 8 for an exciting session of Countersteer, our webinar series on emerging mobility topics. Hear from five youth safety leaders on the unique mobility challenges facing our youth in the U.S. today and the changes that can help save young lives on and around our roads.

Countersteer: Empowering Youth Through Mobility Safety

On a new episode of the Talk of Fame Podcast, we got to chat with Maria Weston Kuhn! Maria is the Founder of Drive US Forward, which is a non-profit working to end gender discrimination in transportation. They raise public awareness, empower young people, amplify survivors, and mobilize grassroots support for systemic change.

Talk of Fame Podcast with Maria Weston Kuhn

Once every six minutes: the U.S Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) 

 in the United States in 2020 (the latest year the data is available). Put another way, there are about 14,386 accidents per day and 5,250,873 police-reported car accidents per year – and women are at a greater risk for being injured or killed in those car accidents than men are.

Fasten Your Seatbelts: A Female Car Crash Test Dummy Represents Average Women For The First Time In 60+ Years

 had a truly terrifying experience on what should have been a perfect family getaway. While traveling in Ireland in December 2019, she survived a head-on collision when a distracted driver veered into the wrong lane on a country road. Her father and brother, sitting in the front of the rental car, were unharmed, while Kuhn and her mother, sitting in the back, suffered severe injuries. “My small intestine was ruptured by my seatbelt, and I required emergency surgery,” says Kuhn, who, after returning home to Maine, was forced to miss a semester of college. “I found out later that our injuries were not unique. Crashes affect women differently because car safety standards are tailored to men. It’s a form of gender discrimination that injures and kills thousands of women each year.”

The Real Reason Why Cars Are More Dangerous for Women

Aidan Kohn Murphy

In the car with her family that cold winter morning in 2019, Maria Weston Kuhn had no idea how her world would change – or how she would change the world.

That day a distracted driver crashed into her family’s car head on, and Maria and her mother suffered severe injuries. Maria’s brother and father, however, came out of the crash unscathed. At the time, none of them realized that their fates were part of a larger pattern in which 

women are 73% more likely than men to be injured in the same frontal crash

Like most Americans, Maria didn’t know these statistics when she suddenly became one of them – but she knows about them now, and she is determined to change them with her organization, 

Maria Weston Kuhn: Driving Toward a Safer Future for All

Asked for Too Much?

12,039. That’s how many American women were 

—the latest year that gender collision data was available.

12,039 women—nearly 33 women killed every day.

12,039 women—12 percent more than the year before.

12,039 women—a number more devastating knowing that many of their deaths 

. In other words, these women may have survived the same crash if they were men.

Lack of Gender Diversity in Crash Safety Testing Is Fatal for Women

Petition Submission

Petition Send

Dear Secretary Buttigieg, President Biden, and National Highway Trac Safety Administration Acting Administrator Ann Carlson,

We at Drive US Forward, along with our 18,800 petition signatories, call upon you to end the fatal gender discrimination in car safety testing. We implore you to adopt the THOR 5F accurate female crash test dummy into the New Car Assessment Program, and to test it in the driver’s seat in the New Car Assessment Program.

As you know, women are 17% more likely to be killed and 73% more likely to be severely injured in frontal car crashes than men. Because the National Highway Trac Safety Administration (NHTSA) doesn't crash test cars with accurate female dummies, cars are not designed to protect women. In fact, no female dummy is required to be tested in the driver's seat of the New Car Assessment frontal crashes at all. This injustice has fatal consequences – it kills 1,300 American women every year, and injures 466,000 more. These consequences are devastating and preventable.

Drive US Forward Sends Petition with Over 18,800 Signatures

The Senate and House Appropriations Committees recently released their respective FY24 Appropriations reports. Both reports in the House and Senate encourage prompt adoption of the advanced THOR 5F female dummy, and require the use of a female dummy in the driver’s seat. This groundbreaking change, if implemented, would save hundreds of women's lives every year, and represents a historic step in ending fatal gender discrimination in automotive safety.

Founder of Drive US Forward Applauds Inclusion of Female Crash Test Dummy Language in FY24 Appropriations Reports

Sign Our Petition

Want to Help?

In 2019, Maria and her family were in a car accident. Her father and brother, sitting in the front seat, were fine. Maria and her mother, sitting in the back seat, were both badly injured. Why?

Meet Maria Weston Kuhn, the Gen-Z Warrior Taking on the Car Industry

This week we speak with Maria Weston Kuhn, Founder of Drive Us Forward and car crash survivor. Drive Us Forward is a Gen Z led 501(c)(3) non-profit organization advocating for the end of gender inequity in automobile safety standards. Maria tells us about how her experience as a crash survivor led to her activism and to starting the foundation. We hear her perspective and experience when it comes to working with elected officials to address the gender inequities in our policies surrounding car crash testing, the kinds of test dummies we use, and how we can hold government entities accountable for their inaction on the matter.

Drive US Forward: A Conversation with Maria Weston Kuhn

in 2005, @ford @nissan @nissanusa @chrysler lobbied against using female crash test dummies in NCAP

Vision Zero Youth Council IG Live

Fair Trade

Shot → Chaser Instagram

DeLauro Tweet

Apple Crash Dummy Thread

Response to Senator Schmitt

Jacqueline Azah IG Live

Soho Sign TikTok

MWK Talking Drive Launch

On Dec. 26, 2019, my family and I drove down a winding country road. Windshield wipers beat like a metronome, rhythmically breaking the constant wash of falling rain. Suddenly, headlights shined through the mist ahead. An oncoming driver had rounded the corner into our lane and his tires skidded across the wet asphalt. He crashed into us head on.

It’s Time to End Discrimination in Crash Testing

If a woman is involved in a car crash, she is 17% more likely to die than a man in the same crash. In this episode, Caroline investigates why... and comes up with a campaign to fix crash testing. To email Euro NCAP President Niels Ebbe Jacobson with a message asking for more transparency, just click through to the link on the Tortoise site.

Deadly injustice: Why cars aren't safe for women

Maria suffered terrible injuries in a car accident simply because car seatbelts are designed for young men. Changing that would cost less than €1 per belt she tells PJ. See more at mariawkuhn.com

My Seatbelt Injured Me – Let's Change That

A car crash in Cork which changed a US woman's life forever has inspired her to campaign for better car safety for women globally.

Maria Kuhn, 22, was in Ireland with her family during Christmas 2019 when they collided with another motorist driving on the wrong side of the road.

Cork crash inspires US student's campaign for better car safety

As a woman and car-accident survivor, glaring gender-based inequities in car safety are devastating. More than 1,300 American women die annually from preventable injuries in car crashes. Inadequate and male-centric design and testing practices are to blame. Now, there may be hope—but only if we can hold the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration accountable.

When will regulators finally get serious about car safety for women?

In July 2019, my coauthor Hana was hit head on by a passenger truck attempting to pass in a no-passing zone. The whole family was seriously injured, but most of all the female passengers, whose spines were fractured and intestines torn. Halfway across the world and five months later to the day, a distracted driver jumped lanes and smashed into me. In that crash too, I and the other women in the car suffered a ruptured intestine and broken bones, while the men walked away mostly unharmed. By the time Hana and I found each other a year later, united by a search for answers, more than 400,000 women had been severely injured by motor vehicles.

10,000 women die in car crashes each year because of bad design

“Please, don’t cry. I love you,” I whispered to my sister. She squeezed my hand as we chuckled softly at the “Mr. Maria Kuhn” misprinted on my new bracelet. Patient 7843649, Emergency Department, 12/26/19.

In a moment of solitude, I prayed. The force of the head-on collision ruptured my small intestine

 I was due for a running of the bowels, or the removal of all abdominal organs to find the source of the leaking acid and blood. My mother’s sternum and tailbone were badly broken.

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