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Consumer Reports


Crash lab researchers no dummies

http://www.jewishworldreview.com | (KRT) It's one of the most dangerous parking places in the nation.

Every car left there is broadsided at 38 mph. And yet, 10 or 12 cars still wind up at this spot each year, waiting to be smashed in the inevitable side-impact collision.

Of course, only a dummy would sit in one of those cars. In fact, two dummies sit in each car. And they keep sitting in cars parked in the same jinxed parking place, no matter how many times they're hit.

None of this happens by accident. It is, however, designed to find out what really does happen by accident.

This is the Vehicle Crashworthiness Laboratory at Milwaukee's Zablocki Veterans Affairs Medical Center, a place where white-coated researchers work with crash-test dummies to come up with new ways to rate the chances of injuries in collisions.

As a result of the Milwaukee research team's work, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recently added information on head injuries to its side-impact crash ratings, said Narayan Yoganandan, biomedical engineering chairman at the Medical College of Wisconsin, which runs the crash lab.

That's significant because one-third of crash-related head injuries are fatal, and the risk of head injuries is four times higher in side-impact crashes, according to research by Thomas Gennarelli, Medical College neurosurgery chairman; Frank Pintar, director of the college's neuroscience research labs; and Yoganandan.

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For side-impact crashes, the federal agency's "star" ratings - in which a five-star rating represents the lowest risk of injury - are based on the chances of chest injuries, Yoganandan explained. But now NHTSA is adding footnotes to those ratings as a heads-up for possible head damage, he said.

Drivers can see the results of the crash lab's work on NHTSA's Web site, nhtsa.gov.

Among 2003 sport-utility vehicles, for example, the Suzuki Grand Vitara 4x4 earned five stars for protecting back-seat passengers in side-impact crashes and the Honda Element 4x4 was awarded four stars, but both ratings have notations warning of higher risk of head injuries.

Medical College researchers are working with NHTSA to incorporate the head-injury risks into the regular star ratings, Yoganandan said.

Researchers also found that the combination of side air bags and properly worn seat belts helps reduce the risk of injury, Yoganandan said.

The road to those conclusions leads through a combination of violent crashes, engineering expertise and medical research at the crash lab, a $1.5 million facility where three people work full time, joined by three to five others for each test, Pintar said.

A total of 15 to 20 people work on various aspects of the Medical College's crash research, which has been going on in different ways for more than 20 years, Pintar said.

To conduct the vehicle crash tests, NHTSA has been paying the lab $150,000 to $200,000 a year, plus all the cars the researchers can destroy, for the past three years, Pintar said. This is one of only a few federally funded crash labs, and it's the only one tied to an academic institution that helps analyze the test results, Yoganandan said.

Each test starts with wheeling a shiny new car into position at the end of the lab's test track. They're often top-of-the-line models, and technicians enjoy sitting in them for a moment before they're demolished, Pintar said.

"It is sometimes sad to take a brand-new Mercedes or a brand-new BMW and smash something into it," Pintar said. A new Ford Thunderbird "was very difficult to test," he said.

Technicians place one of the lab's six crash-test dummies in the driver's seat and another in a rear passenger seat. Each of the $30,000 dummies is made of metals, plastic and other materials that can withstand repeated impacts, Pintar said.

"The unique thing about dummies is that they don't break like we would," he said.

Instead, the dummies are outfitted with sensors to measure how they would be injured if they were real people. They're even dressed in street clothes to increase the realism of the tests.

"We don't drive naked," Pintar noted.

At the other end of the 470-foot track is a wheeled 3-ton barrier, powered by a 270-horsepower motor, Yoganandan said. That device is made of steel and loaded with aluminum to simulate the materials in a car, Pintar said.

Video cameras are placed in the test car, on the barrier and around the lab, for a total of nine cameras recording the action at 1,000 frames per second, Yoganandan said.

One of the first things technicians do after a crash is to swing over a crane that picks up the test car and flips it upside down, Yoganandan said. The car's gas tanks have been filled with a non-flammable fluid, and researchers check whether any of that fluid is leaking.

If a leak is detected, "that raises a huge eyebrow right away," because of the risk of fire, Yoganandan said. Researchers send that information to NHTSA, which orders an immediate recall in such cases, he said.

In most cases, no leaks are detected, and researchers focus on analyzing potential injuries to occupants, Yoganandan and Pintar said.

Testing usually runs from November through March, using cars, minivans, SUVs and light trucks from the current model year, Pintar said.

Scientific research aside, is it fun to crash big metal things into cars?

"Oh, absolutely," Pintar said. "When you were little, didn't you like smashing (toy) cars into each other?"

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© 2003, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services