Narrator: Crash-test dummies take all the hits
so that we don't have to.
Today they're jam-packed with technology
and can cost more than $1 million each.
But despite decades of innovation,
one thing has remained the same.
The body shapes of the dummies themselves
are still based on an average-sized man
from the middle of last century.
We went inside the factory of one of the top manufacturers
to see how they're assembling the most advanced
and diverse generation of dummies ever
and to find out why they're so expensive.
Humanetics is the largest manufacturer
of crash-test dummies in the world,
based fittingly just outside America's Motor City, Detroit.
But ATDs, as they are known, are a rare breed.
People think that there's hundreds of thousands
or millions of crash-test dummies in the world,
and, in fact, there really isn't.
The entire world market probably sells
about 300 crash-test dummies in any one year.
Narrator: The most advanced THOR design
takes up to five months to complete.
That's because they can include more than 30,000 parts.
It may look like a simple mannequin,
but inside the dummy is a lot of engineering
and a lot of time and a lot of work.
Narrator: A complex combination of metals, rubber,
foam, vinyl, and plastics make up each dummy.
And then inside comes an intricate network
of sensors and electronics,
which feed thousands of bits of data
back to car builders
about the kinds of force experienced in a crash.
Here, a worker pours the vinyl mixture into a face mold
before putting it into an oven.
And the finished product has got to be perfect.
Each dummy needs to survive countless impacts
while continuing to relay reliable data.
Since the 1960s, car safety improvements,
designed in part from data provided by crash-test dummies,
have saved an estimated 600,000 lives in the US.
Chris: So it has to be reliable,
not only for one or two crashes,
but for tens of thousands of crashes
over a lifespan that could be 30-plus years.
Narrator: After molding, each one is trimmed
and finished by hand.
Underneath the skin,
a skeleton provides strength and durability.
But unlike human bones, these ones don't break so easily.
Most of the bone structures are made out of steel,
and it has to be machined.
We use numerically controlled machining
to make sure they're precisely manufactured.
Bryan: So, inside here, he's actually machining
what is a Hybrid III 95th pelvis.
We have a print where we have to meet
all the tight tolerances.
He's machining out the hip sockets,
where the femurs are going to go.
Narrator: Skulls, ribs, and pelvises
are all modeled after their human counterparts.
Older models are crude
compared to the latest high-tech generation.
This THOR dummy even has a pelvis with movable parts.
Bryan: The THOR pelvis is much more anatomically correct.
It allows for more load cells and sensors
to be installed on the dummy
so that we can record more accurate information.
Narrator: An array of sensors is used to detect
which body parts would have been damaged
or broken in a crash
and which would have just been left with bumps and bruises.
Every injury that we are able to calculate
is because we have literally sensors
in every body part that's likely to have an injury.
So it's very complex.
Narrator: The sensors are built and calibrated
in their own special lab.
The newest dummies contain hundreds of them.
When a dummy crashes,
the forces come from different directions
at different strengths.
Sensors can measure compression, torque,
impact, displacement, and acceleration.
Older dummies had cables running into them
that sent information to an outside computer.
Chris: The weight of the cabling
would bias the test in itself,
so we developed a data-acquisition system.
This is really like the black box
that goes inside the crash-test dummy.
But what that does is captures the data
in microseconds from the crash,
and then that can be downloaded separately.
Narrator: It's no wonder that a dummy
comes with such a hefty price tag.
And if you look at our most advanced crash-test dummies,
with hundreds of sensors and 30,000 parts
hand-built to the most biofidelic standards in the world,
they can be as much as $1 million.
Narrator: Yet the majority of crash tests
are still carried out with less sophisticated dummies.
The vehicle is underway.
Narrator: And in spite of the fact that more women
than men in the US hold driver's licenses,
ratings agencies continue to use dummies
based on a male body shape to compile
their star ratings for car manufacturers.
For front crashes, we
use a Hybrid III dummy
that represents a midsize male.
For our side crashes, we use what's called a SID-IIs dummy.
Represents a smaller female occupant or an adolescent.
Narrator: Women and adolescents are represented
by smaller versions of the male body shape.
Even the male dummies used in tests are behind the times.
They're modeled on the height and weight
of a man in the US from the 1980s.
While height hasn't changed, waistlines have.
The average man has put on 20 pounds since then,
while the standard dummy has not.
Humanetics and other dummy manufacturers
began designing more representative dummies
more than a decade ago.
Blake: The abdomen is slightly more biofidelic
than the 50th has historically been.
Narrator: The THOR generation of models
include both a male version, the THOR-50th,
and a female version, the THOR-5th.
Chris: The difference here is it's not a scaled-down male.
This is truly a female crash-test dummy.
And if you look at the THOR-5th,
there are many new sensors that have been added
to specifically address the injuries and concerns
that we're seeing in the field
associated with female drivers.
Narrator: Better reflecting real body shapes and sizes
means a wider variety of dummies
and greater production costs.
But the net result is better data and safer vehicles.
Chris: You can actually provide additional information
back to the designers of the car companies,
the designers of the airbag, the seatbelt,
and the other restraint suppliers,
and they can use that information to build even safer cars.
Narrator: However, the cars that we'll see years from now
might not ever be tested with crash-test dummies at all.
Raul: The future holds potentially many changes
for our industry.
One of the things that might change
is that we will be conducting less physical testing
with real dummies and real vehicles
and more testing in the virtual world
to represent a wider range of speeds,
impact angles,
a wider range of occupants,
male, female,
different sizes.
Narrator: For now, though, crash-test dummies
are still painstakingly pieced together by hand.
And they're our best chance of surviving a crash,
even if the cars they ride in
all end up the same way.