Old And Obese Crash Test Dummies Are America's Next Safety Innovation
Crash test dummies are about to get fat. And old. The 50-year-old standard size and shape of dummy is about to be joined by new models representing elderly and obese people.
The familiar dummy style is said to represent the average size and weight for the current population, but with more people becoming overweight and an ageing population in many western nations, an American (obviously) manufacturer called Humanetics has unveiled the two new prototypes that it says will lead to better crash protection for the old and/or overweight.
One is modelled on a 70-year-old woman with a body mass index (BMI) of 29, and the other mimics a fat man in his 40s with a BMI of 35. The sensors have been placed and calibrated to record the unique responses of these body types.
There are key differences in the way different body types handle car crashes, say the scientists involved in the project. Fat people suffer less abdominal trauma but more lower body damage in a comparable impact versus an average person. In fact, a University of California study from 2013 found that obese drivers are 78 per cent more likely to die in a car crash, owing to their ‘submarining’ under the seatbelt and out of its protective cuddle.
As for old people, traditional diagonal seatbelts can cause huge chest injuries, with Humanetics hinting at the potential for other designs that better protect more fragile bones. Five-point harnesses, anyone? Probably not.
One question we do have is whether, if these designs make it into official Euro NCAP crash testing, manufacturers will have to provide three times the amount of cars for destruction so that testers can check all three body shapes in every simulation. We can’t imagine they’d be thrilled about the extra expense…
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Up next:
Vaper crash test dummy
Pokemon-go player crash test dummy
And, new for 2017, a crash test dummy holding a fidget spinner
Or just lose weight - not saying you deserve to die if you’re fat but the world shouldn’t revolve around morbidly obese people.
Plus if this negatively impacts healthy sized people then this is a mismarket
I’m with you here. Sure, there are rare cases of people who can’t help being obese due to medical conditions that affect their metabolism, but if the world revolves around morbidly obese people (at the rate we’re going, this might be the case literally as well as metaphorically xD…), it removes some of the incentive to slim down. The real problem is that people are programmed to like fat and sugar because in prehistoric times energy was scarce. But now food is easy to come by and we excercise less and less so this evolutionary remnant can be harmful.
That’s what happens when fast food is cheaper than healthy food. For a good majority of people, being fat is not a choice.
Instead of spending all this money protecting obese people and making their lives easier, maybe we should be investing in health programmes (ones that ACTUALLY WORK LONG TERM).
Word!
Truth has been told!
This is just sad. The population is getting fatter and fatter and they have nothing better to do than encourage that unhealthy lifestyle, wich also destroys our environment on a long term, with things like this. Smh
Why though? They already come with their own air bags
US send all the soldiers home and send those fattycakes out there to lose some, and build high walls, around fast food chains so they get exercise trying to get to the fatty food :)
They’d be ok on the battlefield imo. Can you imagine a bullet being able to go through all that body fat ?
So that’s why the seat in that new Equinox was unbelievably huge! (Don’t kill me, I’m a bit chubby myself)
I’m not fat okay!