The Trump administration approved the design for a female crash test dummy, a long-sought step toward better representing women in vehicle safety — but the dummy is not yet being used in federal crash tests.
U.S. crash testing has historically relied on dummies modeled on the male body. Research and advocates say women are more likely to be injured in crashes than men, even after accounting for factors such as crash severity and vehicle size. Calls for a more accurate female test surrogate go back decades; Consumer Reports traces them to 1980.
In the early 2000s regulators added a small “female” dummy, but it was essentially a scaled-down male model with breasts added, which missed many real anatomical differences. Around that time, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) began collaborating with Humanetics to build a more accurate female-design dummy. That work produced the THOR-05F — Test device for Human Occupant Restraint, 5th-percentile Female — the first dummy built to female anatomical data and representing a very small woman.
Humanetics CEO Chris O’Connor highlighted specific distinctions: “The pelvis for a female is more rounded and does not hold the seatbelt the same way.” He also pointed to differences in the neck and lower leg, areas linked to comparatively higher rates of some injuries in women.
Some overseas regulators have embraced the design, but in the U.S. the dummy has remained in limbo while NHTSA runs additional testing. Cost is a major factor: development and individual units are expensive, and single dummies can cost more than $1 million.
Critics note that the THOR-05F represents a 5th-percentile woman and therefore does not reflect the majority of female bodies. Safety advocates urge broader approaches, including using computer simulations to model a wider range of body sizes and continuing to collect real-world dummy data to inform those models.
Publishing technical specifications is only one step. A final federal rule must be issued before the dummy can be formally included in tests, and the test protocols themselves have not been rewritten. NHTSA says it is using the female dummy for research and that the released specs allow automakers to begin using it. The federal New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) process to consider incorporating the dummy is expected to begin around 2027–2028.
Advocacy group Women Drive Too welcomed the approval but warned it is not sufficient on its own and continues to press Congress to require use of female dummies in actual crash tests. After decades of advocacy, formal adoption into U.S. federal safety testing remains a few years away.