By Jonathon Ramsey, Autoblog.com - Anyone can be an ordinary dummy, whereas being a good crash-test dummy takes work. A few things you probably didn't know: the official name for a crash-test dummy is "anthropomorphic test device" (ATD), General Motors "has a long history" designing ATDs, and the process is so specialized that there's even a Rear Impact Dummy Task Group.
GM is working with five other OEMs on the dummies that help ensure humans stay as safe as possible in car crashes. The latest advance is the second generation of the Biofidelic Rear Impact Dummy, or BioRID II, designed by engineers at Chalmers University in Gothenburg, Sweden. It has a backbone with 24 simulated vertebrae (the same number we have in our real vertebral columns) to recreate natural seating positions and back and neck movement in rear collisions. The challenge now is to make sure that the BioRID II can "deliver repeatable, reproducible test results" from which the next advances in safety can be engineered.
That's just where GM comes in. One of its award-winning engineers produced a rear-impact sled just for the purpose.
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