Maria Weston Kuhn has a lingering problem with the crash that forces her to undergo emergency surgery during her vacation in Ireland: Why did she and her mother get seriously injured while her father and brother sitting in the front stand out?
“It was a frontal crash and they were closest to the point of contact,” Kuhn, 25, said. “That was an early clue that there were other things going on. ”
When Kuhn returned to Maine, she found an article where her grandmother cut one from the consumer’s report and left it in bed. She learned that women are 73% more likely to be injured in frontal lobe crashes. Vehicle testing It dates back to the 1970s by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and is still almost entirely based on the figure of a man.
Survivors become activists
Kuhn, who opened law school at NYU this fall, took action and founded a nonprofit to get us forward. Its purpose is to raise public awareness and ultimately encourage members of Congress to sign a bill that requires the NHTSA to include more advanced female dummies in its test.
The agency’s decision on whether the car is withdrawn from the market, and the dummies used in its safety tests may affect which ones get a coveted five-star rating.
“It seems like we have a simple solution here where we can have a test dummy that reflects the collapse of ordinary women and men.” Senator Deb FischerNebraska Republican introduced legislation in the past two meetings, he told the Associated Press.
Senators from both sides signed Fischer’s “She Driving Act” and the transport secretary of the past two presidential administrations expressed support for the update of the rules.
But the push for new safety requirements has been moving at a slow pace for various reasons. This is especially true in the United States, most research is happening and around it. 40,000 people were killed Car accidents every year.
evolution Crash test virtual
The crash test virtual character currently used in the NHTSA five-star test is called the Hybrid III, which was developed in 1978 and weighed 5-foot, 171-pound man (the average size of the 1970s was averaged in the 1970s, but 29 pounds lighter than the current average). The so-called female dummy is essentially a smaller version of the male model, with its rubber jacket representing the breasts. It is often tested in the passenger seat or the back seat, but rarely in the driver’s seat, even if most licensed drivers are women.
“What they didn’t do is design a crash test dummy that is different from a man’s injury in an area where women are injured,” said Christopher O’Connor, president and CEO of Farmington Hill, Michigan, which has spent more than a decade developing and refining.
The cost of a female dummy with human material with all available sensors is about $1 million, about twice the cost of hybrid power used now.
But, O’Connor said, more accurately reflects anatomical differences between genders, including anatomical differences in the neck, clavicle, pelvis, pelvis and legs.
Always need such a body dummy Vehicle safety Test and verify accuracy Virtual testing, O’Connor said.
Europe incorporated more advanced male dummies developed by human engineers (based on 50% of people) into their testing procedures shortly after Kuhn collapsed in Ireland in 2019. Several other countries, including China and Japan, have adopted it.
However, the model and female version the company used to compare, the Thor 5F (based on the 5th percentile female), has been suspicious of some U.S. automakers who believe more complex devices may exaggerate the risk of injury and undermine the value of certain safety features such as seat belts and airbags.
Debate on whether more sensors mean more security
Bridget Walchesky, 19, has to be taken to the hospital and needs eight surgeries in a month, killing her friend who is driving after a 2022 crash near her home in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Walchesky, admitting that the seat belt might have saved her life, said the results of some of the injuries (including her ruptured clavicle) made her nail her too tightly, which she thought was a better safety test with a focus on women.
“Seat belts aren’t really built for female corpses,” Wolcheski said. “Some of my injuries, the way the strength hit me, they might have deteriorated.”
The Automotive Innovation Alliance said a better way to ensure safety, called a priority, is by upgrading to existing hybrid dummies rather than empowering new ones, the Industry Trade Group said in a statement to the Associated Press.
“This can happen on a faster timeline and lead to faster security improvements, rather than requiring NHTSA to adopt unproven crash-tested virtual technology,” the alliance said.
The human-herited Thor dummy scored high in early tests at the Vehicle Safety Agency. NHTSA used actual collapsed corpses to compare results and found that they outperform existing hybrids in predicting nearly all injuries, including head, neck, shoulders, abdomen, abdomen and legs.
The research arm funded by auto insurance companies, the Insurer Safety Association, a separate review of the dummy’s ability to predict chest injury in frontal lobe collapse is even more critical. Despite the expansion of sensor count, the Insurance Institute’s test found that male Thor dummies are not as accurate as current hybrid dummies, which also has limitations.
“More not necessarily better,” said Jessica Jermakian, senior vice president of vehicle research at IIHS. “You also have to be sure that the data tells you the right things and how real people are acting in that crash.”
Slow pace of changing rules
NHTSA’s budget plan promises to develop a female Thor 5F version with the ultimate goal of including it in the test. But considering that the male version of Thor adopted by other countries is still waiting for final U.S. approval, there may be a long wait.
The 2023 report by the Office of Government Accountability for Congress cited many “missing milestones” in the development of various crash virtual enhancements by NHTSA, including in the Thor model.
Kuhn admits that he is frustrated with the slow process of trying to change the regulations. She said she knows why car companies are reluctant to make broader design changes to women’s safety in terms of greater consideration.
“Luckily, they have very skilled engineers and they will figure it out,” she said.
