Interview with a crash test dummy

A lifetime of car crashes has left behind a few scratches on crash test dummies like “Rudi” from the Allianz Center for Technology (AZT). The American "Rusty" Haight is also involved in accidents, even sitting behind the wheel when the cars crash. 

 

"Idiots behind the wheel are the real road safety challenge." These are the words of "Rusty" Haight, a man who actually wrecks cars for a living. "Rusty" Haight could be described as a living crash test dummy. He has been involved in 976 road accidents since 1994. So far, however, apart from bruising and sore ribs, he has escaped serious injury.
 

Driving one vehicle into another is just part of the job for this former accident investigator for the San Diego Police Department. Today, Rusty Haight is director of the Collision Safety Institute in San Diego, an independent institute for accident research, training and accident advice. Haight reconstructs traffic collisions in order to improve road safety. In so doing, however, he prefers to leave the high-speed, high-impact destructive crashes to a real crash test dummy. But there's no substitute, he argues, for the human driver when investigating at somewhat slower speeds.
 

For serious accidents, the dummy has to take its turn
 

"When I'm driving I can replicate different types of movements, providing different parameters for crash data. Crash dummies are good, but at the end of the day they're just motionless dolls. Although they can survive serious collisions, they're not always representative. They don't show how the human body moves in the event of collisions which are less serious than those we experience with the 'standard dummies'," says Haight.
 

This is the big difference between him and a real crash test dummy, such as Rudi. Rudi has been in 600 road accidents during his career. Apart from some dents and scratches, he has also emerged pretty much unscathed from all this. Rudi is one of ten crash test dummies used at the Allianz Center for Technology (AZT) in Ismaning, Germany.

Rusty Haight, director of the Collision Safety Institute. His drastic demands are understood by those who know that the home of his Institute in San Diego is a big center for illegal road racing in the USA.
Rusty Haight, director of the Collision Safety Institute. His drastic demands are understood by those who know that the home of his Institute in San Diego is a big center for illegal road racing in the USA.
A crash test dummy in action at the Allianz Center for Technology.

A crash test dummy in action at the Allianz Center for Technology.

The advantage of a doll like this, especially constructed for crash tests, is obvious. It will also survive a high-speed accident, or one with exceptional circumstances. Sebastian Dürnberger, an engineer at AZT, explains what these may be: "The accidents don't leave the dummies entirely unscathed either. During the football World Cup we simulated a crash involving football fans in a motorcade. In this, the female dummy, who was standing in the car and leaning out of the open sunroof, suffered serious abdominal injury." You'd never subject a human to such dangerous experiments. For a dummy dog, another test proved far more fatal - during a high-speed test at 50 km per hour, the dog in the dog crate had its head entirely torn off.
 

As cars are developing at such an astonishing pace, knowledge is gained through almost every test. "The design of cars changes all the time and people are always finding novel ways to maim each other," explains Haight, the living dummy. A lot of his crashes are also for the benefit of accident investigators he is training.
 

AZT works more scientifically. "When we carry out a special test, it may be that the resources are tied up in the test facility for two weeks, because the experimental setup for this is quite elaborate," explains AZT’s Dürnberger. Then there could be a series of studies involving frequent repetition of the same experimental setup on an experiment sled. In this case, it would be easy to do 30 tests per week.

The Allianz Center for Technology near Munich (Germany).

The Allianz Center for Technology near Munich (Germany).

A privilege, not a right
 

For Rusty Haight, one of the most important issues remains driver education. "Part of the problem is that people see driving as a right, not a privilege. We need a political leader with the courage to stand up and say that people are getting more selfish and impatient on the road. We need someone to say that if you don't behave properly you will forfeit the privilege of driving a motor vehicle. Human nature is the real problem."
 

These drastic demands are understood by those who know that the home of Haight's Collision Safety Institute in San Diego is a big center for illegal road racing in the USA.
 

"Road safety mostly depends on behavior and interaction that complies with the rules, safe vehicles and safe roads", explains Dürnberger from AZT. This is the reason why AZT is not limiting its safety research for road traffic to crash demonstrations, but has also undertaken to adhere to the guidelines of the EU road safety charter. With their interdisciplinary thinking, AZT researchers are, therefore, taking account of the interplay of humans, the vehicle and the environment in the event of an accident. By means of scientific publications, presentations, committee work and producer contacts, they are contributing to improving safety on our roads.
 

When will we reach the point at which the human crash test dummy will have finally fulfilled his task? "I have to get to at least 1,000 crashes, don't I?" Haight laughs. "Let's push the envelope, as 1001 is a nice number ..." Based on the average of two tests carried out each week at AZT, the chances are that Rusty will be sitting with his feet up on a sunny beach enjoying his retirement long before Rudi.
 
 

“Interview with a crash test dummy” originally appeared on Allianz Open Knowledge. Edited and revised by allianz.com.

See Rusty hit the airbag

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Christian Weishuber
Allianz Deutschland AG
Phone +49.89.3800-18169
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