VERITY NOW Submits Official Comment to NHTSA on Proposed Changes to NCAP Program

WASHINGTON, DC – VERITY NOW, a coalition to end gender discrimination in vehicle safety testing, published an official comment to NHTSA on June 6, 2022 in response to their proposed changes to the NCAP safety program. VERITY NOW expressed its general disappointment when NHTSA failed to use this proposed rulemaking as an opportunity to fix deadly biases in its crash testing protocol.

“We acknowledge the NHTSA’s general orientation toward making road users safer, but the absence of any mention of the gender safety gap in crash testing from the proposed rulemaking proposal is glaring,” said former Congresswoman Susan Molinari and Co-Chair of VERITY NOW. “We are losing approximately 1,300 women every year, and the fact that we’re ignoring this safety inequity is appalling.”

There are two elements to gender bias in crash testing. First, the New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) has never tested for women in the driver’s seat in frontal and side barrier crash tests, although women make up over half of drivers. Second, in the seating positions where the protocol does test for women, it uses outdated technology that treats women like scaled-down versions of men. When government ratings are based on this standard, the result are inherently biased that mislead the public into believing 5-star safety ratings apply to men and women equally, when they do not.

“The next iteration of the NCAP rule is an opportunity for the government to get on the right side of history and start the process of rectifying the safety gap between men and women and creating equality in auto safety,” said Beth Brooke, Co-Chair of VERITY NOW and former Global Vice Chair of Public Policy for EY. “NHTSA needs to commit to the same number of tests, the same nature of tests, and the same advanced quality of crash test equipment for women that is used for men.”

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VERITY NOW is a coalition voicing concern about these inequities and raising awareness with policymakers in the U.S. 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.