Posted on 07/11/2002 6:02:59 AM PDT by CholeraJoe
Crash Test Dummies Don't Match Size of US Drivers
Wed Jul 10, 5:07 PM ET
By Alan Mozes
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The crash test dummy driver model used in most frontal auto collision tests in the US does not represent a realistic range of body types, say researchers, raising questions about the accuracy of government and insurance car safety reports.
Virtually all non-manufacturer crash testing of new cars in the US is conducted by either the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration ( news - web sites) (NHTSA) or the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety ( news - web sites).
Both organizations use the "50th percentile male Hybrid III Crash Dummy"--commonly known as H3CD--as a stand-in for drivers involved in a full or partial front-end collision at 35 to 40 miles per hour. The H3CD is configured to the measurements of a male driver who is 5'10" and 170 pounds.
Moran and his colleagues compared the types and rates of injuries found in crash tests using the H3CD model with those found in a NHTSA sample of approximately 20,000 real traffic crashes that took place nationally between 1995 and 1999. Police records indicate that an estimated 26 million people across the US were involved in a collision requiring a tow-away during that time period.
All the accidents involved drivers who were seat-belted in light passenger vehicles, such as cars, light trucks, vans and sport utility vehicles. Drivers were both male and female, and many were taller, shorter, heavier or lighter than the standard test dummy.
In the June issue of The Journal of Trauma: Injury, Infection, and Critical Care, the researchers report that the standard crash test dummy could not account for the influence that varying driver heights and weights had on the real-world severity of injuries.
Moran's team found, for example, that drivers who were shorter and lighter than the dummy had fewer leg fractures than the crash tests predicted. Drivers who were heavier and shorter suffered such injuries more often than predicted.
Head injuries, they noted, appeared to occur more often among drivers who were a little bit lighter and shorter than the dummy, and less often among those were at the more extreme ends of the weight and height scales.
The authors conclude that use of the H3CD to model injuries is applicable to only a narrow segment of the American population--leaving many men, women and children out of the picture.
The researchers note, however, that new government crash test standards are set to require use of a female crash test dummy in the near future, and that efforts are under way to design a "pregnant" dummy as well.
Ideally, Moran told Reuters Health, tests would use many different types of driver dummies in repeat crashes of the same vehicle, but such a system will not be put in place anytime soon.
"Part of the problem is that it's inordinately expensive to crash these cars, so realistically they can't take four cars and crash it with three different dummies for every new vehicle that comes out into the market," he said.
"But I think as computer 3-D modeling improves, crash simulation testers will be able to really and truly program in different-size people," he added. "So when they actually do the crash test the results will be applicable to all, no matter which dummy you use."
SOURCE: The Journal of Trauma 2002;52:1116-1120.
Blue-haired old lady dummy
Old man with a hat dummy
Overweight liberal soccer-mom dummy
Morbidly obese alcoholic longshoreman dummy
Skinny little pimp dummy
Feel free to invent your own.
I...er...resemble that remark.
Waterfowl hunters don't wear blaze orange. Ducks and geese aren't colorblind.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
My hubby is 6'3", 220lbs. I'm 5'6", 115lbs (after two kids no less *proud beams*). And what about the people at opposite ends of the spectrum like my sis (5'2" and 105lbs) or say, Randy Johnson (6'10", 235lb).
Democrat Dummy -- just use ANY Democrat.
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