Toronto, Ontario – A new NHTSA report suggests that improvements in vehicle safety standards and safety equipment has reduced the disparity between female and male fatalities during collisions from 18.3 percent to 6.3 percent, comparing model years 1960-2009 to 2010-2020.
Notably, vehicles with model years 2015-2020 had the lowest difference at 2.9 percent.
According to the NHTSA, the newly published study “Female Crash Fatality Risk Relative to Males for Similar Physical Impacts” updates a similar 2013 study on fatality differences between both genders during similar collisions.
Compared to older vehicles, this reduction in female deaths comes from greater awareness of physiological differences between men and women regarding car safety equipment. This led to more OEMs designing seat belts, airbags and using female dummies during crash test studies.
While vehicles between 2015-2020 had a gap dropping to 2.9 percent, the NHTSA says that more can be done to completely eliminate disparities in crash outcomes between men and women. This includes computer modelling to study crashes on different body types and sizes, biofidelic crash test dummies and new safety standards.
To read the original NHTSA study, click here.
