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Watch: Purple-Haired Dem Thanks Buttigieg for Development of 'Female Dummies' for Equity

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Well, thank the heavens: We now have female crash-test dummies acting in the name of equity. And everyone’s favorite purple-haired far-left Democrat is thanking the otherwise hapless Transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, for making it happen.

The viral moment came during a House Appropriations Committee hearing Wednesday, according to Fox News, dealing with the budget for the Department of Transportation. Given its efficacy of late, one might be tempted to joke that it should be reduced to zero on a performance-based level, but I’ll concede that’s mighty infeasible.

And, as one might predict, Democrats found something to like in every bit of questionable spending there was — in particular, Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, perhaps best known to casual congressional observers as “the one with the purple hair you occasionally see screaming on C-SPAN.”

This time, she was applauding the fact that Buttigieg’s DOT was looking to end “gender inequality” in crash-testing cars with “female dummies.”

“You also plan to make important investments to address the roadway safety crisis, including the critical funding that would accelerate the development – and this is an area that I’ve written to you about – of the use of female dummies in crash testing,” she said in the viral clip.

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“This will start to fight the gender inequity among vehicle safety and crash victims.”

Mind you, as ABC News notes, men still make up more than 70 percent of drivers in fatal auto wrecks. However, in older car models, there was a higher risk for a woman of the same age to be killed in a crash than a man.

Is funding female crash dummies a waste of money?

This inequity has changed significantly in vehicles manufactured between 2010 and 2020, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Female front-row occupants are 6.3 percent more likely to die in a fatal wreck, compared to 18.3 percent for models made between 1960 and 2009.

However, DeLauro is leading the charge for new “female dummies” instead of the current dummies, which are smaller versions of the male dummies.

Last year, she and other lawmakers wrote to Buttigieg, demanding that the DOT “takes additional measures to protect women drivers by requiring the use of accurate, up-to-date female crash test dummies in NHTSA’s [National Highway Traffic Safety Administration] New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) and Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS).”

In the letter, lawmakers said current dummies don’t properly simulate how “female drivers are significantly more vulnerable to certain injuries in crashes, such as those to the neck and abdomen.”

Now, let’s keep in mind that, according to data from the National Safety Council, the number of deaths in auto accidents has fallen across the board from a high of 27.7 per 100,000 people in 1969 to 11.9 per 100,000 in 2019. (Numbers since 2020 have been slightly higher, although NBC News notes this has been fueled by a phenomenon of “[p]andemic-fueled risky driving,” citing an AAA survey that found riskier drivers tended to drive more during lockdowns.)

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Even over a 30-year period, we see how numbers have dropped: In 1989, the National Safety Council notes, there were 2.26 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles. In 2019, that was 1.2 — meaning the rate was almost halved during that time period. (And in 1969, it was 5.21 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles — over four times what it was in the last pre-pandemic year.)

So, why am I boring you with what you already know, which is that cars are safer than they used to be? It’s that, in the midst of high inflation, we have supply chain crises, a whiplash attempt to switch over to electric vehicles that will make driving more expensive and less convenient, a general lack of care over the massive train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, and a pork-filled infrastructure-building spree future generations will be paying dearly for, Rosa DeLauro is concerned about … crash test dummy equity.

But wait a minute, I can hear some people saying. DeLauro is a Democrat — i.e., a member of the party that’s just about to change Title IX so that men who identify as transgender can’t be banned from women’s sports.

If there’s no physical difference in body type that would give men an advantage, surely there’s no need for “female dummies” in the name of equity. In fact, there’s no need for smaller dummies at all, right?

Your Democratic Party, America: Females need to be protected better by crash test dummies that aren’t just smaller men, but women athletes don’t need to be protected from competing against males because there’s no biological difference in body type. As if the purple hair didn’t say enough about the fatuousness of U.S. left, the words coming out of DeLauro’s mouth certainly revealed her as a female dummy.

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C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014. Aside from politics, he enjoys spending time with his wife, literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, coffee, Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties).
Birthplace
Morristown, New Jersey
Education
Catholic University of America
Languages Spoken
English, Spanish
Topics of Expertise
American Politics, World Politics, Culture




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