The newer the car, the safer it is for women drivers, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a new report Tuesday.
While the NHTSA’s previous report, published in 2013, found that women had a much higher risk of dying in car crashes compared to men, the 2022 report said car technology more recently, in accordance with the strengthened regulations, the disparity has decreased.
According to the National Road Safety Strategy released by the Department for Transport in February, officials said that while men make up more than 70% of drivers involved in fatal crashes, the risk of motor vehicle deaths is even higher big for a woman than for a man. same age
The new NHTSA report states that the estimated difference in fatality risk estimates for female and male front-row occupants is 6.3 percent for car models from 2010 to 2020. Older vehicles, with the model years 1960-2009, present a disparity almost triple the 18.3%.
For vehicles in the 2015-2020 model years, the disparity closed even further, reaching 2.9 percent, according to the report.
Newer generations of cars are equipped with dual airbags, which significantly reduces the risk of women dying in crashes, NHTSA said. Newer cars also have more advanced seat belts, the agency said, further reducing women’s risk.
However, NHTSA Administrator Steven Cliff said the department is still looking to improve the impact on women involved in car crashes.
“Advancing equity, including in our transportation system, is one of the top priorities of the Biden-Harris administration,” Cliff said in a press release. “Although the new NHTSA report shows a significant decrease in the differences in crash outcomes between women and men, more work is needed to eliminate the disparities that remain.”
NHTSA said a number of developments are in the works to close the remaining gap, including the development of new biofidelic crash test dummies and sophisticated computer models that can assess the effects of different types of crashes in a wide range of types and sizes of the human body. .
In addition, the agency is investigating the extent to which gender disparities exist in injuries in crashes like this one and evaluating new safety standards to eliminate any remaining disparities.
Historically, car crash tests used only male dummies, according to the NHTSA. The agency has used a 4-foot-11-inch-tall, 108-pound “female dummy” in some tests since 2003, NHTSA said. However, this size is not accurate for the average American woman’s body.
According to NHTSA, new federal funding through the major infrastructure bill passed last year will help accelerate research on this front to further reduce the gap in male and female crash death rates. car
