American Cars Don't Protect Women.
Because the Department of Transportation's car crash safety standard, the New Car Assessment Program, does not test vehicles with an accurate or representative female dummy, women are:
17% more likely to be killed and
73% more likely to be severely injured
than men in the same crash.
How is this possible?
The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), and its National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), are in charge of making sure that American vehicles are safe for consumers. They do that through two tests, the New Car Assessment Program and the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard.
The New Car Assessment Program (NCAP), established in 1979 by NHTSA, evaluates vehicle safety through crash tests and assigns star ratings based on performance. However, the program primarily uses crash test dummies modeled after the average male, leaving women and smaller-bodied individuals at greater risk in real-world crashes. The female dummy NHTSA currently uses is called the Hybrid III 5th.
The Hybrid III 5th
The Hybrid III 5th is a crash test dummy designed to represent a small adult woman; it stands approximately 4’11” and weighs 108 pounds. This "female" dummy, unlike the women it is supposed to represent, a scaled-down version of the male dummy, rather than an anatomically accurate female model.
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Therefore, it does not account for key physiological differences between men and women, such as muscle and fat distribution, bone density, and pelvis shape, making it an inadequate representation of real-world female crash injuries.
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Further, the Hybrid III 5th lacks adequate sensors, including in the abdomen, head, and lower leg. These points of measurement are the most critical for crash dummies. Without these injury data, the dummies are rendered essentially ineffective at sensing the most common injuries that women suffer in crashes.
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Despite these limitations, it remains the primary “female” dummy used in U.S. safety tests —when it's used at all.
Underrepresentation in NCAP
In NCAP, there are three tests that NHTSA conducts; they are Front-Impact, Side-Barrier Impact, and Side-Pole Impact. Two of these three tests, the Front-Impact and Side-Barrier Impact, do not use the female crash test dummy in the driver's seat, even though women make up the majority of licensed drivers in the United States.
This gender bias results in significant disparities—women are up to 17% more likely to be killed and 73% more likely to be seriously injured in frontal crashes compared to men. Studies estimate that this disparity kills over 1,300 women every year, and injures over 466,000 more. Despite decades of research confirming these risks, NCAP has yet to implement a crash test dummy that accurately represents female physiology, including differences in muscle mass, bone density, and body shape.
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For more information, please refer to the Government Accountability Office's 2023 Report: DOT Should Take Additional Actions to Improve the Information Obtained from Crash Test Dummies.