Posted by Daniel Clayton in Car Accidents

Car manufacturers keep talking about improved safety features on their vehicles, but some people in Tennessee may be wondering how manufacturers and car companies are coming up with these advanced safety features. For example, how do they know that a side air bag is going to provide greater protection in a side-impact accident than some other type of door?

Tennessee drivers who were around in the 1980s may remember the crash-test dummies Vince and Larry who made appearances in public service announcements to encourage passengers to wear their seatbelts. Vince and Larry were just two of a host of different crash-test dummies that allowed manufacturers to study developing automobile safety issues.

There is a new type of dummy - the Hybrid III - that is being used to help researchers tackle such issues as distracted driving, texting while driving and drunk drivers. The Hybrid III, which is made of steel, rubber and vinyl, is a long way from what researchers have previously used. Before the invention of the crash-test dummy in 1949, scientists used human volunteers, animals, cadavers and sandbags to test a car's safety.
Although automobile manufacturers are working hard to keep Nashville drivers and passengers safe, their safety is sometimes dependent on the driving of other people on the road. It doesn't matter how safe a vehicle is if a drunk driver blows through a stop sign and causes a side-impact accident. When these kinds of accidents do happen, however, a driver can always hold the motorist who hit him or her responsible for the damage or injuries the victim sustained in the accident.

Source: New York Times, "Who Made That Crash-Test Dummy?"Hilary Greenbaum and Dana Rubinstein, May 18, 2012
Tags: Car Accidents, car safety