VERITY NOW Condemns NHTSA for Preserving Gender Discrimination in Five-Star Safety Ratings Program
WASHINGTON, DC – Today, VERITY NOW, a coalition advocating for gender equity in car safety, released the following statement after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced updates to its flagship 5-Star Safety Ratings program that preserves gender discrimination by failing to require equal quality of technology and the same nature and number of tests for women as the government requires to protect men.
“In the National Roadway Safety Strategy released in January, the Department of Transportation acknowledged that women are 17% more likely to die than men in comparable car crashes, causing over 1,300 preventable deaths per year. Yet today, NHTSA made clear it has no intention of preventing these needless deaths and will instead preserve the clear gender discrimination that is present in the 5-Star Safety Ratings program,” said former Congresswoman Susan Molinari and Co-Chair of VERITY NOW. “Until we require up-to-date female dummies in all crash tests, as the rule proposes to do for men, the U.S. government is sending a signal that it doesn’t believe women’s lives are as important as men’s.”
“It is clearly discriminatory for the Department of Transportation to deny women the same level of protection in car crashes that men have received for decades. At a time when women make up the majority of drivers, the government’s continued prioritization of men’s safety in car crashes is an affront to those of us who believe in gender equality,” said Beth Brooke, Co-Chair of VERITY NOW and former Global Vice Chair of Public Policy for EY. “It is baffling that NHTSA would revise its crash test standards without eliminating the obvious gender bias embedded within them. Technologically accurate female dummies should be used in every 5-Star Ratings program crash test that male dummies are used in.”
VERITY (Vehicle Equity Rules in Transportation) NOW is a coalition voicing concern about these inequities and raising awareness with policymakers in the U.S. and E.U. who have the power to fix them. VERITY NOW strives to achieve equity in vehicle safety by educating on, and advocating for, crash testing standards that protect everybody, regardless of gender, height, weight or age.