Crash test dummy
Encyclopedia
Human body
The human body is the entire structure of a human organism, and consists of a head, neck, torso, two arms and two legs.By the time the human reaches adulthood, the body consists of close to 100 trillion cells, the basic unit of life...
, and are usually instrumented to record data
Data
The term data refers to qualitative or quantitative attributes of a variable or set of variables. Data are typically the results of measurements and can be the basis of graphs, images, or observations of a set of variables. Data are often viewed as the lowest level of abstraction from which...
about the dynamic behavior of the ATD in simulated vehicle impacts. This data can include variables such as velocity
Velocity
In physics, velocity is speed in a given direction. Speed describes only how fast an object is moving, whereas velocity gives both the speed and direction of the object's motion. To have a constant velocity, an object must have a constant speed and motion in a constant direction. Constant ...
of impact, crushing force
Force
In physics, a force is any influence that causes an object to undergo a change in speed, a change in direction, or a change in shape. In other words, a force is that which can cause an object with mass to change its velocity , i.e., to accelerate, or which can cause a flexible object to deform...
, bending, folding, or torque
Torque
Torque, moment or moment of force , is the tendency of a force to rotate an object about an axis, fulcrum, or pivot. Just as a force is a push or a pull, a torque can be thought of as a twist....
of the body, and deceleration rates during a collision
Collision
A collision is an isolated event which two or more moving bodies exert forces on each other for a relatively short time.Although the most common colloquial use of the word "collision" refers to accidents in which two or more objects collide, the scientific use of the word "collision" implies...
for use in crash test
Crash test
A crash test is a form of destructive testing usually performed in order to ensure safe design standards in crashworthiness and crash compatibility for various modes of transportation or related systems and components.- Types :...
s.
For the purpose of U.S. regulation and Global Technical Regulations and for clear communication in safety and seating design, dummies carry specifically designated reference points, such as the H-point
H-point
In vehicle design and especially automotive design, the H-point is the theoretical, relative location of an occupant's hip, specifically the pivot point between the torso and upper leg portions of the body, either relative to the floor of the vehicle or relative to the height above pavement level...
; these are also used, for example, in automotive design.
Crash test dummies remain indispensable in the development of and ergonomics
Ergonomics
Ergonomics is the study of designing equipment and devices that fit the human body, its movements, and its cognitive abilities.The International Ergonomics Association defines ergonomics as follows:...
in all types of vehicle
Vehicle
A vehicle is a device that is designed or used to transport people or cargo. Most often vehicles are manufactured, such as bicycles, cars, motorcycles, trains, ships, boats, and aircraft....
s, from automobile
Automobile
An automobile, autocar, motor car or car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor...
s to aircraft
Aircraft
An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air, or, in general, the atmosphere of a planet. An aircraft counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines.Although...
.
History
On August 31, 1869, Mary WardMary Ward (scientist)
Mary Ward was an Irish amateur scientist who was killed when she fell under the wheels of an experimental steam car built by her cousins. As the event occurred in 1869, she is the world's first known motor vehicle accident victim...
became the first recorded victim of a steam-powered automobile accident; Karl Benz
Karl Benz
Karl Friedrich Benz, was a German engine designer and car engineer, generally regarded as the inventor of the gasoline-powered car, and together with Bertha Benz pioneering founder of the automobile manufacturer Mercedes-Benz...
had not yet invented the gasoline-powered automobile (1886). Ward, of Parsonstown, Ireland, was thrown out of a motor vehicle and killed. Thirty years later, on September 13, 1899, Henry Bliss
Henry Bliss (road accident victim)
Henry Hale Bliss was the first person killed by a motor vehicle accident in the United States, and the first known in the Americas. On September 13, 1899 he was disembarking from a streetcar at West 74th Street and Central Park West in New York City, when an electric-powered taxicab struck him...
became North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
's first motor vehicle fatality when hit while stepping off a New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
trolley
Tram
A tram is a passenger rail vehicle which runs on tracks along public urban streets and also sometimes on separate rights of way. It may also run between cities and/or towns , and/or partially grade separated even in the cities...
. Since then, over 20 million people worldwide have died due to motor vehicle accidents.
The need for a means of analyzing and mitigating the effects of motor vehicle accidents on humans was felt soon after commercial production of automobiles began in the late 1890s, and by the 1930s, when the automobile became a common part of daily life and the number of motor vehicle deaths was rising. Death rates had surpassed 15.6 fatalities per 100 million vehicle-miles and were continuing to climb.
In 1930, the interior of a car featured Dashboard
Dashboard
A dashboard is a control panel placed in front of the driver of an automobile, housing instrumentation and controls for operation of the vehicle....
s of rigid metal, non-collapsible steering columns — and protruding knobs, buttons, and levers. Without seat belts, passengers in a frontal collision could be hurled against the interior of the automobile or through the windshield
Windshield
The windshield or windscreen of an aircraft, car, bus, motorbike or tram is the front window. Modern windshields are generally made of laminated safety glass, a type of treated glass, which consists of two curved sheets of glass with a plastic layer laminated between them for safety, and are glued...
. The vehicle body itself was rigid, and impact forces were transmitted directly to the vehicle occupants. As late as the 1950s, car manufacturers were on public record as saying that vehicle accidents simply could not be made survivable because the forces in a crash were too great.
Cadaver testing
Detroit's Wayne State UniversityWayne State University
Wayne State University is a public research university located in Detroit, Michigan, United States, in the city's Midtown Cultural Center Historic District. Founded in 1868, WSU consists of 13 schools and colleges offering more than 400 major subject areas to over 32,000 graduate and...
was the first to begin serious work on collecting data on the effects of high-speed collisions on the human body. In the late 1930s there was no reliable data on how the human body responds to the sudden, violent forces acting on it in an automobile accident. Furthermore, no effective tools existed to measure such responses.
Biomechanics
Biomechanics
Biomechanics is the application of mechanical principles to biological systems, such as humans, animals, plants, organs, and cells. Perhaps one of the best definitions was provided by Herbert Hatze in 1974: "Biomechanics is the study of the structure and function of biological systems by means of...
was a field barely in its infancy. It was therefore necessary to employ two types of test subjects in order to develop initial data sets.
The first test subjects were human cadavers
Body
With regard to living things, a body is the physical body of an individual. "Body" often is used in connection with appearance, health issues and death...
. They were used to obtain fundamental information about the human body's ability to withstand the crushing and tearing forces typically experienced in a high-speed accident. To such an end, steel ball bearing
Ball bearing
A ball bearing is a type of rolling-element bearing that uses balls to maintain the separation between the bearing races.The purpose of a ball bearing is to reduce rotational friction and support radial and axial loads. It achieves this by using at least two races to contain the balls and transmit...
s were dropped on skull
Human skull
The human skull is a bony structure, skeleton, that is in the human head and which supports the structures of the face and forms a cavity for the brain.In humans, the adult skull is normally made up of 22 bones...
s, and bodies were dumped down unused elevator
Elevator
An elevator is a type of vertical transport equipment that efficiently moves people or goods between floors of a building, vessel or other structures...
shafts onto steel plates. Cadavers fitted with crude accelerometer
Accelerometer
An accelerometer is a device that measures proper acceleration, also called the four-acceleration. This is not necessarily the same as the coordinate acceleration , but is rather the type of acceleration associated with the phenomenon of weight experienced by a test mass that resides in the frame...
s were strapped into automobiles and subjected to head-on collisions and vehicle rollovers.
Albert King's 1995 Journal of Trauma article, "Humanitarian Benefits of Cadaver Research on Injury Prevention", clearly states the value in human lives saved as a result of cadaver research. King's calculations indicate that as a result of design changes implemented up to 1987, cadaver research has since saved 8500 lives annually. He notes that for every cadaver used, each year 61 people survive due to wearing seat belt
Seat belt
A seat belt or seatbelt, sometimes called a safety belt, is a safety harness designed to secure the occupant of a vehicle against harmful movement that may result from a collision or a sudden stop...
s, 147 live due to air bags, and 68 survive windshield
Windshield
The windshield or windscreen of an aircraft, car, bus, motorbike or tram is the front window. Modern windshields are generally made of laminated safety glass, a type of treated glass, which consists of two curved sheets of glass with a plastic layer laminated between them for safety, and are glued...
impact.
However, work with cadavers presented almost as many problems as it resolved. Not only were there the moral and ethical
Ethics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
issues related to working with the dead, but there were also research concerns. The majority of cadavers available were older White
White people
White people is a term which usually refers to human beings characterized, at least in part, by the light pigmentation of their skin...
adults who had died non-violent deaths; they did not represent a demographic
Demography
Demography is the statistical study of human population. It can be a very general science that can be applied to any kind of dynamic human population, that is, one that changes over time or space...
cross-section of accident victims. Deceased accident victims could not be employed because any data that might be collected from such experimental subjects would be compromised by the cadaver's previous injuries. Since no two cadavers are the same, and since any specific part of a cadaver could only be used once, it was extremely difficult to achieve reliable comparison data. In addition, child cadavers were not only difficult to obtain, but both legal and public opinion
Public opinion
Public opinion is the aggregate of individual attitudes or beliefs held by the adult population. Public opinion can also be defined as the complex collection of opinions of many different people and the sum of all their views....
made them effectively unusable. Moreover, as crash testing became more routine, suitable cadavers became increasingly scarce. As a result, biometric data were limited in extent and skewed toward the older males.
Volunteer testing
Some researchers took it upon themselves to serve as crash test dummies. Colonel John Paul Stapp USAF propelled himself over 100 km/h on a rocket sledRocket sled
A rocket sled is a test platform that slides along a set of rails, propelled by rockets.As its name implies, a rocket sled does not use wheels. Instead, it has sliding pads, called "slippers", which are curved around the head of the rails to prevent the sled from flying off the track...
and stopped in 1.4 seconds. Lawrence Patrick
Lawrence Patrick
Lawrence Patrick may well be considered one of the fathers of the crash test dummy. Between 1960 and 1975, while a biomechanics professor at Detroit's Wayne State University, Patrick described his work by saying "I was a human crash-test dummy", Patrick allowed himself to be subject to rocket...
, then a professor at Wayne State University, endured some 400 rides on a rocket sled
Rocket sled
A rocket sled is a test platform that slides along a set of rails, propelled by rockets.As its name implies, a rocket sled does not use wheels. Instead, it has sliding pads, called "slippers", which are curved around the head of the rails to prevent the sled from flying off the track...
in order to test the effects of rapid deceleration on the human body. He and his students allowed themselves to be smashed in the chest with heavy metal pendulum
Pendulum
A pendulum is a weight suspended from a pivot so that it can swing freely. When a pendulum is displaced from its resting equilibrium position, it is subject to a restoring force due to gravity that will accelerate it back toward the equilibrium position...
s, impacted in the face by pneumatically driven rotary hammers, and sprayed with shattered glass to simulate window implosion. While admitting that it made him "a little sore", Patrick has said that the research he and his students conducted was seminal in developing mathematical model
Mathematical model
A mathematical model is a description of a system using mathematical concepts and language. The process of developing a mathematical model is termed mathematical modeling. Mathematical models are used not only in the natural sciences and engineering disciplines A mathematical model is a...
s against which further research could be compared. But while data from live testing was valuable, human subjects could not withstand tests which went past a certain degree of physical injury. To gather information about the causes and prevention of injuries and fatalities would require a different kind of subject.
Animal testing
By the mid-1950s, the bulk of the information cadaver testing could provide had been harvested. It was also necessary to collect data on accident survivability, research for which cadavers were woefully inadequate. In concert with the shortage of cadavers, this need forced researchers to seek other models. A description by Mary Roach of the Eighth Stapp Car Crash and Field Demonstration Conference shows the direction in which research had begun to move. "We saw chimpanzeeChimpanzee
Chimpanzee, sometimes colloquially chimp, is the common name for the two extant species of ape in the genus Pan. The Congo River forms the boundary between the native habitat of the two species:...
s riding rocket sleds, a bear
Bear
Bears are mammals of the family Ursidae. Bears are classified as caniforms, or doglike carnivorans, with the pinnipeds being their closest living relatives. Although there are only eight living species of bear, they are widespread, appearing in a wide variety of habitats throughout the Northern...
on an impact swing...We observed a pig
Pig
A pig is any of the animals in the genus Sus, within the Suidae family of even-toed ungulates. Pigs include the domestic pig, its ancestor the wild boar, and several other wild relatives...
, anesthetized
Anesthesia
Anesthesia, or anaesthesia , traditionally meant the condition of having sensation blocked or temporarily taken away...
and placed in a sitting position on the swing in the harness, crashed into a deep-dish steering wheel at about 10 mph."
One important research objective which could not be achieved with either cadavers or live humans was a means of reducing the injuries caused by impalement on the steering column. By 1964, over a million fatalities resulting from steering wheel
Steering wheel
A steering wheel is a type of steering control in vehicles and vessels ....
impact had been recorded, a significant percentage of all fatalities; the introduction by General Motors in the early 1960s of the collapsible steering column cut the risk of steering-wheel death by fifty percent. The most commonly used animal subjects in cabin-collision studies were pigs, primarily because their internal structure is similar to a human's. Pigs can also be placed in a vehicle in a good approximation of a seated human.
The ability to sit upright was an important requirement for test animals in order that another common fatal injury among human victims, decapitation
Decapitation
Decapitation is the separation of the head from the body. Beheading typically refers to the act of intentional decapitation, e.g., as a means of murder or execution; it may be accomplished, for example, with an axe, sword, knife, wire, or by other more sophisticated means such as a guillotine...
, could be studied. Additionally, it was important for researchers to be able to determine to what extent cabin design needed to be modified to ensure optimal survival circumstances. For instance, a dashboard
Dashboard
A dashboard is a control panel placed in front of the driver of an automobile, housing instrumentation and controls for operation of the vehicle....
with too little padding or padding which was too stiff or too soft would not significantly reduce head injury over a dash with no padding at all. While knobs, levers, and buttons are essential in the operation of a vehicle, which design modifications would best ensure that these elements did not tear or puncture victims in a crash. Rear-view mirror
Rear-view mirror
A rear-view mirror is a mirror in automobiles and other vehicles, designed to allow the driver to see rearward through the vehicle's backlight ....
impact is a significant occurrence in a frontal collision; how should a mirror be built so that it is both rigid enough to perform its task and yet of low injury risk if struck.
While work with cadavers had aroused some opposition, primarily from religious institutions, it was grudgingly accepted because the dead, being dead, felt no pain
Pain
Pain is an unpleasant sensation often caused by intense or damaging stimuli such as stubbing a toe, burning a finger, putting iodine on a cut, and bumping the "funny bone."...
, and the indignity of their situations was directly related to easing the pain of the living. Animal research, on the other hand, aroused much greater passion. Animal rights groups such as the ASPCA
American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is a non-profit organization dedicated to preventing cruelty towards animals...
were vehement in their protest, and while researchers such as Patrick supported animal testing because of its ability to produce reliable, applicable data, there was nonetheless a strong ethical unease about this process.
Although animal test data were still more easily obtained than cadaver data, the fact that animals were not people and the difficulty of employing adequate internal instrumentation limited their usefulness. Animal testing is no longer practiced by any of the major automobile makers; General Motors discontinued live testing in 1993 and other manufacturers followed suit shortly thereafter.
Dummy evolution
Simulacrum
Simulacrum , from the Latin simulacrum which means "likeness, similarity", was first recorded in the English language in the late 16th century, used to describe a representation, such as a statue or a painting, especially of a god...
as early as 1949, when "Sierra Sam" was created by Samuel W. Alderson
Samuel W. Alderson
Samuel W. Alderson was an inventor best known for his development of the crash test dummy, a device that, during the last half of the twentieth century, was widely used by automobile manufacturers to test the reliability of automobile seat belts and other safety protocols.Alderson was raised in...
at his Alderson Research Labs (ARL) and Sierra Engineering Co. to test aircraft ejection seats, aviation helmets and pilot restraint harnesses. This testing involved the use of high acceleration to 1000 km/h (600 mph) rocket sleds, beyond the capability of human volunteers to tolerate. In the early 1950s, Alderson and Grumman produced a dummy which was used to conduct crash tests in both motor vehicles and aircraft.
Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company is an American multinational automaker based in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The automaker was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. In addition to the Ford and Lincoln brands, Ford also owns a small stake in Mazda in Japan and Aston Martin in the UK...
, but which was also adopted by the National Bureau of Standards. Sierra followed up with a competitor dummy, a model it called "Sierra Stan," but GM, who had taken over the impetus in developing a reliable and durable dummy, found neither model satisfied its needs. GM engineers decided to combine the best features of the VIP series and Sierra Stan, and so in 1971 Hybrid I was born.
Hybrid I was what is known as a "50th percentile
Percentile
In statistics, a percentile is the value of a variable below which a certain percent of observations fall. For example, the 20th percentile is the value below which 20 percent of the observations may be found...
male" dummy. That is to say, it modeled an average male in height, mass, and proportion. The original "Sierra Sam" was a 95th percentile male dummy (heavier and taller than 95% of human males). In cooperation with the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), GM shared this design, and a subsequent 5th percentile female dummy, with its competitors.
Since then, considerable work has gone into creating more and more sophisticated dummies. Hybrid II was introduced in 1972, with improved shoulder, spine, and knee responses, and more rigorous documentation. Hybrid II became the first dummy to comply with the American Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) for testing of automotive lap and shoulder belts. In 1973, a 50th percentile male dummy was released, and the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) undertook an agreement with General Motors to produce a model exceeding Hybrid II's performance in a number of specific areas.
Though a great improvement over cadavers for standardized testing purposes, Hybrid I and Hybrid II were still very crude, and their use was limited to developing and testing seat belt
Seat belt
A seat belt or seatbelt, sometimes called a safety belt, is a safety harness designed to secure the occupant of a vehicle against harmful movement that may result from a collision or a sudden stop...
designs. A dummy was needed which would allow researchers to explore injury-reduction strategies. It was this need that pushed GM researchers to develop the current Hybrid line, the Hybrid III family of crash test dummies.
Hybrid III family
Hybrid III
This is a break-out article; for the main article, see Crash test dummyThe Hybrid III is the standard crash test dummy as of the beginning of the 21st century...
, the 50th percentile male dummy which made its first appearance in 1976, is the familiar crash test dummy, and he is now a family man. If he could stand upright, he would be 175 cm (5'9") tall and would have a mass
Mass
Mass can be defined as a quantitive measure of the resistance an object has to change in its velocity.In physics, mass commonly refers to any of the following three properties of matter, which have been shown experimentally to be equivalent:...
of 77 kg (170 lb). He occupies the driver's seat in all the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) 65 km/h (40 mph) offset frontal crash tests. He is joined by a "big brother", the 95th percentile Hybrid III, at 188 cm (6 ft 2 in) and 100 kg (223 lb). Ms.
Ms.
Ms. or Ms is an English honorific used with the last name or full name of a woman. According to The Emily Post Institute, Ms...
Hybrid III is a 5th percentile female dummy, at a diminutive 152 cm (5 ft) tall and 50 kg (110 lb). The three Hybrid III child dummies represent a ten year old, 21 kg (47 lb) six year old, and a 15 kg (33 lb) three year old. The child models are very recent additions to the crash test dummy family; because so little hard data are available on the effects of accidents on children, and such data are very difficult to obtain, these models are based in large part on estimates and approximation
Approximation
An approximation is a representation of something that is not exact, but still close enough to be useful. Although approximation is most often applied to numbers, it is also frequently applied to such things as mathematical functions, shapes, and physical laws.Approximations may be used because...
s. The primary benefit provided by the Hybrid III is improved neck response in forward flexion and head rotation that better simulates the human.
Testing procedure
Every Hybrid III undergoes calibration prior to a crash test. Its head is removed and is dropped from 40 centimetres to test calibrate the head instrumentation. Then the head and neck are reattached, set in motion, and stopped abruptly to check for proper neck flexure. Hybrids wear chamois leatherChamois leather
Chamois leather , sometimes known as a shammy, is a type of porous leather that is favored for its gentle, non-abrasive composition and exceptional absorption properties...
skin; the knees are struck with a metal probe to check for proper puncture. Finally, the head and neck are attached to the body, which is attached to a test platform and struck violently in the chest by a heavy pendulum to ensure that the rib
Human rib cage
-See also:*Terms for bones*Terms for anatomical location*Articulation of head of rib-References:* Clinically Oriented Anatomy, 4th ed. Keith L. Moore and Robert F. Dalley. pp. 62–64...
s bend and flex as they should.
When the dummy has been determined to be ready for testing, and calibration marks are fastened to the side of the head to aid researchers when slow-motion film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
s are reviewed later. The dummy is then placed inside the test vehicle, set to seating position and then marked on either the head and knees. Up to fifty-eight data channels located in all parts of the Hybrid III, from the head to the ankle
Ankle
The ankle joint is formed where the foot and the leg meet. The ankle, or talocrural joint, is a synovial hinge joint that connects the distal ends of the tibia and fibula in the lower limb with the proximal end of the talus bone in the foot...
, record between 30 000 and 35 000 data items in a typical 100–150 millisecond
Millisecond
A millisecond is a thousandth of a second.10 milliseconds are called a centisecond....
crash. Recorded in a temporary data repository in the dummy's chest
Chest
The chest is a part of the anatomy of humans and various other animals. It is sometimes referred to as the thorax or the bosom.-Chest anatomy - Humans and other hominids:...
, these data are downloaded to computer
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
once the test is complete.
Because the Hybrid is a standardized data collection device, any part of a particular Hybrid type is interchangeable with any other. Not only can one dummy be tested several times, but if a part should fail, it can be replaced with a new part. A fully instrumented dummy is worth about €
Euro
The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...
150 000.
Hybrid's successors
Hybrid IIIs are designed to research the effects of frontal impacts, and are less valuable in assessing the effects of other sorts of impacts, such as side impacts, rear impacts, or rolloverRollover
A rollover is a type of vehicle accident in which a vehicle tips over onto its side or roof. The most common cause of a rollover is traveling too fast while turning.- Dynamics :Vehicles can roll over in several ways...
s. After head-on collisions, the most common severe injury accident is the side impact.
The SID (Side Impact Dummy) family of test dummies has been designed to measure rib, spine, and internal organ effects in side collisions. It also assesses spine and rib deceleration and compression of the chest cavity. SID is the US government testing standard, EuroSID is used in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
to ensure compliance with safety standards, and SID II(s) represents a 5th percentile female. BioSID is a more sophisticated version of SID and EuroSID, but is not used in a regulatory capacity. The WorldSID is a project to develop a new generation of dummy under the International Organization for Standardization
International Organization for Standardization
The International Organization for Standardization , widely known as ISO, is an international standard-setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations. Founded on February 23, 1947, the organization promulgates worldwide proprietary, industrial and commercial...
.
BioRID is a dummy designed to assess the effects of a rear impact. Its primary purpose is to research Whiplash
Whiplash (medicine)
Whiplash is a non-medical term describing a range of injuries to the neck caused by or related to a sudden distortion of the neck associated with extension. The term "whiplash" is a colloquialism...
, and to aid designers in developing effective head and neck restraints. BioRID is more sophisticated in its spinal construction than Hybrid; 24 vertebra simulators allow BioRID to assume a much more natural seating posture, and to demonstrate the neck movement and configuration seen in rear-end collisions.
Seat belt
A seat belt or seatbelt, sometimes called a safety belt, is a safety harness designed to secure the occupant of a vehicle against harmful movement that may result from a collision or a sudden stop...
s and air bags. There are three models of the CRABI, representing 18-month, 12-month, and 6-month old children.
THOR is an advanced 50th percentile male dummy. The successor of Hybrid III, THOR has a more humanlike spine and pelvis, and its face
Face
The face is a central sense organ complex, for those animals that have one, normally on the ventral surface of the head, and can, depending on the definition in the human case, include the hair, forehead, eyebrow, eyelashes, eyes, nose, ears, cheeks, mouth, lips, philtrum, temple, teeth, skin, and...
contains a number of sensors which allow analysis of facial impacts to an accuracy currently unobtainable with other dummies. THOR's range of sensors is also greater in quantity and sensitivity than those of Hybrid III.
Popular culture
In the 1980s, the US Department of TransportationUnited States Department of Transportation
The United States Department of Transportation is a federal Cabinet department of the United States government concerned with transportation. It was established by an act of Congress on October 15, 1966, and began operation on April 1, 1967...
launched a series of public service announcement
Public service announcement
A public service announcement or public service ad is a type of advertisement featured on television, radio, print or other media...
s in magazine
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
s and on television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
featuring the antics of two talking crash dummies named Vince and Larry who modeled seat belt
Seat belt
A seat belt or seatbelt, sometimes called a safety belt, is a safety harness designed to secure the occupant of a vehicle against harmful movement that may result from a collision or a sudden stop...
safety practices through their slapstick
Slapstick
Slapstick is a type of comedy involving exaggerated violence and activities which may exceed the boundaries of common sense.- Origins :The phrase comes from the batacchio or bataccio — called the 'slap stick' in English — a club-like object composed of two wooden slats used in Commedia dell'arte...
antics. Since then ATDs and references to their usage have been used throughout popular culture including television, films, cartoons and toys.
In the 1980s, the US Department of Transportation
United States Department of Transportation
The United States Department of Transportation is a federal Cabinet department of the United States government concerned with transportation. It was established by an act of Congress on October 15, 1966, and began operation on April 1, 1967...
launched a series of public service announcement
Public service announcement
A public service announcement or public service ad is a type of advertisement featured on television, radio, print or other media...
s in magazine
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
s and on television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
featuring the antics of two talking crash dummies named Vince and Larry who modeled seat belt
Seat belt
A seat belt or seatbelt, sometimes called a safety belt, is a safety harness designed to secure the occupant of a vehicle against harmful movement that may result from a collision or a sudden stop...
safety practices through their slapstick
Slapstick
Slapstick is a type of comedy involving exaggerated violence and activities which may exceed the boundaries of common sense.- Origins :The phrase comes from the batacchio or bataccio — called the 'slap stick' in English — a club-like object composed of two wooden slats used in Commedia dell'arte...
antics. Voices were by Jack Burns
Jack Burns
Jack Burns is an American comedian and voice actor.-Biography:In 1959, he began his career as a comedy team with George Carlin when both were working for radio station KXOL in Fort Worth, Texas...
and Lorenzo Music
Lorenzo Music
Lorenzo Music was an American actor, voice actor, writer, television producer and musician. His best-known roles include voicing the animated cartoon cat Garfield, and Carlton the doorman on the CBS sitcom Rhoda...
. Actors were Tony Reitano as Vince and , later replaced by Whitney Rydbeck, as Larry. Typical dialogue of the PSAs is of Vince being discouraged that their efforts to prove that seat belts save lives are being ignored by the public while Larry is more optimistic. For instance, for one such spot, Larry gets the dispirited Vince out of bed by telling him that Barbara Mandrell
Barbara Mandrell
Barbara Ann Mandrell is an American country music singer best known for a 1970s–1980s series of Top 10 hits and TV shows that helped her become one of country's most successful female vocalists of the 1970s and 1980s...
survived her auto accident because she was convinced to wear her seat belt. The PSAs were directed by William Dear
William Dear
William Dear is a film director, producer and screenwriter known for directing Harry and the Hendersons, If Looks Could Kill, Angels in the Outfield, Wild America and Santa Who?....
(Harry and the Hendersons
Harry and the Hendersons
Harry and the Hendersons is a 1987 American comedy film directed and produced by William Dear, and starring John Lithgow, Melinda Dillon, Lainie Kazan and Don Ameche. It is the story of a family's encounter with the cryptozoological creature Bigfoot...
; Angels in the Outfield
Angels in the Outfield (1994 film)
Angels in the Outfield is a 1994 remake of the 1951 film of the same name. The film stars Danny Glover, Tony Danza and Christopher Lloyd, and features appearances from future stars, including Adrien Brody, Matthew McConaughey, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Neal McDonough.Unlike the original, which...
).
The campaign, with its slogan "You can Learn a Lot from a Dummy," was very popular, and since then crash dummy characters remain a common sight in seat belt safety campaigns, especially those aimed at children.
In the early 1990s, Tyco Toys
Tyco Toys
Tyco Toys is an American toy manufacturer. Since 1997 it has been a division of the Mattel toy company.-History:Mantua Metal Products was a Woodbury Heights, New Jersey, metalworks business founded in 1926 by John Tyler and family...
created a line of action figure
Action figure
An action figure is a posable character figurine, made of plastic or other materials, and often based upon characters from a film, comic book, video game, or television program. These action figures are usually marketed towards boys and male collectors...
s called The Incredible Crash Dummies
The Incredible Crash Dummies
The Incredible Crash Dummies is a line of action figures styled after the eponymouscrash test dummy popularized in a public service advertising campaign of the late 1980s, to educate people on the safety of wearing seat belts. The toys were first released by Tyco Toys in the early 1990s and...
based on the characters from the ads. The colorful toys were intended to fall apart at the touch of a button on their stomachs and could easily be re-assembled. Vehicles could also be bought, which could similarly be crashed into walls and broken, and easily put back together.
The Incredible Crash Dummies line of toys featured characters such as Slick and Spin, the main duo, and their friends, Darryl, Spare Tire, and Bull. Later on, the villainous Junk Bots were introduced.
The popularity of the toys prompted a one-hour television special, The Adventures of the Incredible Crash Dummies
The Incredible Crash Dummies (film)
The Incredible Crash Dummies is an animated television special. It was produced in 1993. In the United States, it originally aired on Fox Kids. It was later repacked as a video to be sold with two of the Crash Dummy action figures .-Plot:Dummyland is a fictional world inhabited only by living crash...
. Unique for its time, the cartoon was produced entirely using 3D computer animation
Computer animation
Computer animation is the process used for generating animated images by using computer graphics. The more general term computer generated imagery encompasses both static scenes and dynamic images, while computer animation only refers to moving images....
techniques. A comic book series was also produced as well as a video game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Super Nintendo Entertainment System
The Super Nintendo Entertainment System is a 16-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America, Europe, Australasia , and South America between 1990 and 1993. In Japan and Southeast Asia, the system is called the , or SFC for short...
and Game Boy
Game Boy
The , is an 8-bit handheld video game device developed and manufactured by Nintendo. It was released in Japan on , in North America in , and in Europe on...
.
Rumors say that due to complaints from some parents groups against the "violence" inherent in the toys, the series was discontinued. A more likely explanation is that Tyco Toys was dissolved in 2001.
In 2004, a series of "Crash Dummies" animated shorts were commissioned for the FOX network
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
, thus spawning another series of toys from Mattel
Mattel
Mattel, Inc. is the world's largest toy company based on revenue. The products it produces include Fisher Price, Barbie dolls, Hot Wheels and Matchbox toys, Masters of the Universe, American Girl dolls, board games, and, in the early 1980s, video game consoles. The company's name is derived from...
through the Hot Wheels
Hot Wheels
Hot Wheels is a brand of die cast toy car, introduced by American toymaker Mattel in 1968. It was the primary competitor of Matchbox until 1996, when Mattel acquired rights to the Matchbox brand from Tyco.-Models:...
brand.
The television series MythBusters
MythBusters
MythBusters is a science entertainment TV program created and produced by Beyond Television Productions for the Discovery Channel. The series is screened by numerous international broadcasters, including Discovery Channel Australia, Discovery Channel Latin America, Discovery Channel Canada, Quest...
employs a crash test dummy for experiments that are too risky for the human hosts to try. "Buster" has tested, among other things, the dynamics of falling elevator
Elevator
An elevator is a type of vertical transport equipment that efficiently moves people or goods between floors of a building, vessel or other structures...
s, drops into water, getting a foot stuck in a washing machine
Washing machine
A washing machine is a machine designed to wash laundry, such as clothing, towels and sheets...
, getting shot out of a drainage culvert
Culvert
A culvert is a device used to channel water. It may be used to allow water to pass underneath a road, railway, or embankment. Culverts can be made of many different materials; steel, polyvinyl chloride and concrete are the most common...
, improper use of construction equipment and ancient attempts at space flight. Buster was redesigned in the second season of the show, giving him more realistic joints, easily replaceable wooden bones that break at the same force as human bones, and fire-proof molded silicone rubber skin.
In Discovery kids' children's educational series Crash Test Danny
Crash Test Danny
Crash Test Danny was a series of 13 educational science sketch television shows for the Discovery Kids channel in the UK.Danny, played by Ben Langley, is a real life crash test dummy who goes the extra mile to put the fizz into physics...
the title character is a living breathing crash test dummy played by Ben Langley who gets crushed, exploded and pulled apart all in the name of science.
Corey taylor, lead singer of masked heavy metal group Slipknot
Slipknot (band)
Slipknot is an American heavy metal band from Des Moines, Iowa. Formed in 1995, the group was founded by percussionist Shawn Crahan and bassist Paul Gray...
originally wore a crash test dummie style mask early in his career.
Night of the Crash Test Dummies is one of the titles of a Far Side
The Far Side
The Far Side is a popular single-panel comic created by Gary Larson and syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate, which ran from January 1, 1980, to January 1, 1995. Its surrealistic humor is often based on uncomfortable social situations, improbable events, an anthropomorphic view of the world,...
cartoon. The title is based on one of the cartoons, in which a horror movie titled Night of the Crash Test Dummies is shown, with several dummies rebelling against a scientist and placing him in a car to crash.
Crash Test Dummies was also the name of a short lived scientific-experiment show in the UK
See also
- Car accidentCar accidentA traffic collision, also known as a traffic accident, motor vehicle collision, motor vehicle accident, car accident, automobile accident, Road Traffic Collision or car crash, occurs when a vehicle collides with another vehicle, pedestrian, animal, road debris, or other stationary obstruction,...
- Car safetyCar safetyAutomobile safety is the study and practice of vehicle design, construction, and equipment to minimize the occurrence and consequences of automobile accidents. Automobile safety is the study and practice of vehicle design, construction, and equipment to minimize the occurrence and consequences of...
- Crash testCrash testA crash test is a form of destructive testing usually performed in order to ensure safe design standards in crashworthiness and crash compatibility for various modes of transportation or related systems and components.- Types :...
- CrashworthinessCrashworthinessCrashworthiness is the ability of a structure to protect its occupants during an impact. This is commonly tested when investigating the safety of aircraft and vehicles. Depending on the nature of the impact and the vehicle involved, different criteria are used to determine the crashworthiness of...
- Euro NCAP
- Buster - Mythbusters
- Safety carSafety carIn motorsport, a safety car or pace car is a car which limits the speed of competing cars on a racetrack in the case of a caution period such as an obstruction on the track. During a caution period the safety car enters the track ahead of the leader...
- Seat belt legislationSeat belt legislationSeat belt legislation requires the fitting of seat belts to motor vehicles and/or the wearing of seat belts by motor vehicle occupants. The U.S. state of Wisconsin introduced legislation in 1961 requiring front seat belt anchorages to be fitted to cars. The Australian state of Victoria mandated...
- Harold MertzHarold MertzHarold J. "Bud" Mertz is considered to be the driving force in the creation of the Hybrid III crash test dummy, the standard dummy used today. Working with General Motors in the late 1960s, Mertz designed and built the dummy which is today the only recognized test device in both North America and...
- The Incredible Crash DummiesThe Incredible Crash DummiesThe Incredible Crash Dummies is a line of action figures styled after the eponymouscrash test dummy popularized in a public service advertising campaign of the late 1980s, to educate people on the safety of wearing seat belts. The toys were first released by Tyco Toys in the early 1990s and...