'Crash test dummies are too skinny!'

Humanetics, the world's leading maker of crash test dummies, is experimenting with an overweight model to better account for accidents involving obese people, who have a significantly greater chance of getting injured or dying from crashes.

Humanetics, the world's leading maker of crash test dummies, is experimenting with an overweight model to better account for accidents involving obese people, who have a significantly greater chance of getting injured or dying from crashes.

Published Oct 30, 2014

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Plymouth, Michigan - Crash test dummies have been around almost as long as crash testing, since there has always been a shortage of human volunteers for the job.

Other than in the United States Air Force, which was still using live volunteers strapped into rocket sleds for high-G crash test research in the 1960s.

It's not known who first came up with the idea of using a 'doll' to simulate a human victim in a crash test, but it's safe to say that few people know more about crash test dummies than Chris O'Connor, CEO of Humanetics, the world's largest maker of research humanoids.

Given that you can't sell a car in the United States or the European Union these days until it's been crash-tested, first by the manufacturer and then by one of the independent NCAP agencies, that's a lot of dummies.

Two things are important for reliable data, he says; firstly, the more channels, sensors and accelerometers you can pack into a dummy, the more sophisticated the results you get and the more informative the conclusions.

Yes, that makes them expensive; the latest dummies can run more than 130 channels and cost as much as $500 000 (R5.5 million) - but you get four or five times as much data out of them per test (bearing in mind that each test also costs you a brand new car) as you could out of the best dummies of 20 years ago, which makes them (relatively) cost-effective.

REALISTIC RESULTS

But it's also important that the dummies should be as lifelike as possible, in terms of size and weight, for realistic results, which has led to the creation of whole families of dummies - including those representing females, children of varying ages and sizes, and even MAMA2B, a dummy that replicates a pregnant woman.

But there's a still a problem with that: most 'male' dummies look like young, healthy guys, somewhere around 1.75 metres tall and weighing about 80kg - and I for one haven't looked like that in forty years.

Neither do most adults in Europe or North America (or, if we're honest, South Africa) and they're not the same shape either. Most of us are overweight and humans tend to put on weight around the middle.

That means we're out of place even before impact because we don't fit properly into the seats of our cars - although upmarket carmakers are starting to make allowances for this with seats that have adjustable side bolsters - and we're more likely to be injured or killed in a crash.

Significantly so; O'Connor says that data coming out of his company's collaboration with customers such as insurers and academic institution indicates obese people are 78 percent more likely to be killed in a crash. That's nearly double the risk.

So Humanetics has begun building plus-size crash test dummies; the one in the red clothing weighs 124kg and has a body mass index of 35 - which is bigger than I am! - and hopefully the next generation of cars will be safer, in terms of crash protection, for us big guys.

NOW HERE'S SOMETHING ELSE TO THINK ABOUT

Older people are more likely to be injured in a serious road crash; O'Connor's industry-wide stats indicate a 50-year-old person is 20 percent more likely to be hurt and an 80-year-old, 40 percent more likely to suffer an injury in a crash, than a fit young adult.

Making dummies that can allow for the variation with age that human flesh is heir to, is even more complicated than building fat dummies, he says, but his company is working on it, and hoping to begin testing a prototype 'Benjamin Button' dummy by 2015.

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