Monday 15th March 2004

Clever Dummy

Worldwide cooperation produces new crash test dummy

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The world's first internationally designed crash test dummy is now ready for production. For the first time in the automotive history, a crash test dummy has been designed, developed and tested collectively by technical working groups from the America's, European and the Asia/Pacific regions.

The dummy, known as WorldSID (for World Side Impact Dummy), has been under development since 1997. Its 212 sensors capture data more than 1000 times per second and store the information in special memory boards inside the dummy, making it the most advanced (and probably the smartest) crash test dummy in the world.

Edmund Hautmann, Chairman of the European Region, an employee of BMW and Project Manager for the WorldSID Program commented, "There are presently at least three different adult male sized side impact dummies in existence. One, developed by the NHTSA in the U.S., has served as the crash dummy to be used in the existing U.S. side impact crash regulation"

"Another was developed in Europe and is the only dummy one can use to crash test for European Regulations. The WorldSID was developed to allow a single test procedure to be used for side impact in any regulation around the world ."

[robert farago]

Great, but the safety folk have STILL failed to take account of the average weight of the average driver. The picture says it all: Armani model dummy.

[danmangt40]

now wait a minute farago. I'm aware of the idea that the dummy needs to replicate the motion of a passenger as best as possible, but I think that weight can be neglected. I imagine that the root of your opposition is that to show what kind of damage is done to the dummy, it needs to suffer from the momentum change that a heavy body would undergo. But this is a fallacy. At impact, the body would accelerate relative to the car, as the car itself is coming to a rapid stop, and that acceleration is going to be the same regardless of mass. One could then extrapolate the force felt by a given passenger simply by multiplying the ACCELERATION on the body at impact with a hard surface in the car by that given mass. The only other place where mass would be accounted for is in friction on the seat and on other things holding the dummy in place, but in the event of a side-impact or offset front collision, these forces are negligible as they offer far less "grip" to the seat than would a seatbelt. A real objection is that in an impact such as this, unless you want to have an intoxicated dummy, all dummies should have a certain flexibility similar to someone tensed up and braced for impact. I'm sure they'll have a pear-shaped dummy eventually, if you're concerned about passengers who are so fat as to not have a body that would move like the skeletal models we have today. (e.g. one with significant mass would still translate around the car like current dummies, but center of gravity would be in a different location and would likely rotate differently after the first small impact in a car.)

[Beasty]

...and another thing, if this dummy is so bloody smart, why does it keep crashing?

[p_green]

thank god some people are seeing sense. its good to see people from such a competitive industry working together to achieve something that will actually improve the situation.

[ultimasimon]

The pictured dummy looks 'armless enough, but it's not very handy.

Joking aside, I would have expected it to have a complete torso with proper hands are full arms as these too fly about on impact and cause / get damaged. How about a couple of cameras mounted in the eye sockets so you actually see what the dummy sees? All this technology with a stated 200 odd sensors, yet still the dummy doesn't have eyes or full limbs. I am yet to be impressed. God only knows how many nerves the human body has, but just 200 sensors tells me that they have got a long way to go yet.