It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why collaboration accelerates the pursuit of safer vehicles, but a dummy can help.

Engineers from General Motors, Ford, Chrysler and other companies have been working together for years to develop advanced crash-test dummies that can more accurately gauge vehicle safety.

Progress has been slow, but their efforts are close to producing smarter dummies.

“We fight with our competitors fiercely in the marketplace, but when it comes to crash dummies, there’s a lot more cooperation than people realize,” said Jack Jensen, technical manager of GM’s crash test lab.

Developing new dummies is difficult because they must react to horrendous impacts in the same ways the human body would. But they must be durable enough to absorb scores or even hundreds of crashes. Some of them last more than a decade.

Naturally, they’re extremely expensive. GM, for example, has about 400 dummies worth about $45 million at a half-dozen crash-test safety labs throughout the world.

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“The development of the dummy is a hard job,” said Jesse Buehler, principal engineer for vehicle performance development at the Toyota Technical Center south of Ann Arbor, Mich. “It’s trying to take assemblies of steel and vinyl and mimic the response of muscle and bone.”

Here are four developments in anthropomorphic test-device technology that soon could lead to changes in crash-test procedures:

• WorldSID: This side-impact dummy is close to reaching the market after more than a decade of development. It has more than 200 electronic sensors that can translate digital readings into a summary of how crashes physically affect a human. That’s about double the number of digital readings today’s side-impact dummies can record. Automakers and governments in the U.S., Europe and Japan have contributed to WorldSID’s development. The dummy could cost much more than today’s dummies, possibly as much as $400,000 a copy, Jensen said.

• THOR: The frontal-impact dummy, which was originally funded by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, is being tested by several automakers. THOR is an acronym for Test Device for Human Occupant Restraint. It would represent significant improvements on the Hybrid III dummy, which was created in the 1970s by GM and is still widely used in test labs today.

The THOR dummy “appears to be an improvement to better assess injury potential to rear-seat occupants wherein frontal impact air bags do not exist,” according to a 2011 study by the Medical College of Milwaukee.

The device would particularly improve the collection of information on neck and shoulder injuries.

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• BioRID: This rear-impact dummy was created by Chalmers University researcher Anna Carlsson in collaboration with automakers such as GM, which has developed tests to examine its effectiveness. Volkswagen, Chrysler, Ford and others have also contributed to its development.

Carlsson said her device would improve automakers’ ability to limit neck injuries among women, who are twice as likely to sustain whiplash during a crash than men.

• Software models: Researchers are constantly tweaking computerized human models to improve digital assessments of crash-test safety. For example, Toyota scientists have developed a Total Human Model for Safety to improve digital analysis of crash tests. It’s already being used.

Despite new developments in crash-test dummies, several obstacles remain.

Getting the required regulatory approvals to start using them could take time. Then the dummies must accurately reflect the average weight of Americans. And navigating the complex network of auto safety regulations worldwide is also a challenge.

 


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