111 Iowa L. Rev. Online 149 (2026)

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Abstract

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (“NHTSA”) is responsible for ensuring vehicle safety. It investigates safety defects in motor vehicles, prescribes national standards for improving safety in the operation and performance of motor vehicles and equipment, and performs vehicle crash tests through its New Car Assessment Program (“NCAP”) to rate vehicles, which is arguably the most relied-upon informer of vehicle safety on cars being sold in the United States. However, embedded in the NCAP are clear gender disparities that undermine NHTSA’s responsibility to ensure vehicle safety. NHTSA does not use an average size female dummy in its vehicle crash testing, and the female dummies that it does use are merely scaled down versions of male dummies, which do not have female physiological features. Moreover, female dummies are not tested in the driver’s seat in all but one test. These disparities lead to higher rates of injuries and fatalities amongst women, despite the overall fatality rate from vehicle crashes being much higher for men than women. This Essay argues that current efforts to bridge this gap do not fully contemplate the complexity of NCAP crash testing and the development and regulation of crash test dummies. Instead, this Note proposes two key steps that are the most practical for NHTSA to take to move towards gender equality in crash testing mandating the THOR-05F in NCAP crash testing and continuing research efforts on fiftieth-percentile female dummies.