Dummy manufacturers are trying to accurately reflect the aging and increasingly obese population in America.
A lot of new dummies out there are getting older and fatter. No, not human ones, but those used by automakers in crash tests.
Dummy manufacturers are trying to accurately reflect the aging and increasingly obese population in America. Which is why engineers at Humanetics, a crash-test-dummy maker, have partnered with University of Michigan trauma surgeon Stewart Wang to build a dummy that weighs 273 pounds and another that replicates an overweight 70-year-old woman.
"The population is getting older, and as it gets older it gets fatter, as well," Wang said.
Differences in body types can affect the injuries that carmakers and safety experts hope to avoid. Aging can cause a person's chest shape to change, for example, which increases the rate of chest injuries 15-fold, according to CNN. Thus, the new older dummy has a chest that sags downward, with a curved spine.
"It should not come as a surprise that anatomically, an elderly person is built very differently compared to someone younger, and therefore will likely sustain very different injuries during a crash," Humanetics says on its website.
More than 40 million licensed drivers in the United States are 65 or older — nearly 1 in 5 drivers on the road, Humanetics says.