On shelves at a Humanetics facility in Huron, Ohio, skulls stare from their eyeless sockets, shiny and silver. Around a corner, a rack is filled with squishy, peach-toned arms, legs, torsos and butts.
"Everything we do has to be pretty human-like," says manufacturing engineering manager Jonathan Keck, "so we tend to have some very unique parts."
Humanetics is the leading manufacturer of automotive crash test dummies — the humanoid devices that are buckled into cars for safety tests to gather data on what would happen to a real person in a crash.
Dummies have been in the news lately, after an updated design for a female dummy took a step closer to widespread adoption.
But for many decades, they've been quietly doing their work, taking hit after hit in the name of saving lives. And a crash test dummy's story starts way before they're buckled in for a collision. They have a life, of sorts, starting at this Huron plant, where their physical parts are born.
The bare bones
Keck wasn't joking when he said everything Humanetics does has to be "pretty human-like."
That's the whole concept of a crash test dummy. It's not important that they look human — in fact, the latest, top-of-the-line designs actually look less realistic, with smooth, flat faces instead of noses, eye sockets and lips.
But it's absolutely essential that they move like a real body would, and record the forces a body would experience.
That means a head that weighs what a human head would weigh, moving on a neck that's about as bendy as a real neck. The dummies' design is informed by data taken from living people's bodies, as well as from cadavers put through their own crash tests — and the new female dummy design, crucially, is informed by data from female bodies. Previous "female" dummies were modified versions of male dummies, and safety advocates have long argued that the resulting anatomical inaccuracies contribute to higher rates of injuries among women than men in real crashes.
Male or female, old design or new, a dummy's "biofidelity" goes all the way down to the bones, which Humanetics crafts out of metal. (You can't buy a precisely engineered rib or clavicle out of a supply catalog.)
Inside the factory, the process is less like an assembly line, and more like a series of craftspeople working at separate stations, with machinists using hand tools and giant, computer-controlled devices to turn raw aluminum into artificial bones. Behind a red curtain, welders connect those bones together; it's dangerous to look at a welding machine, so the curtain protects other workers from an accidental glance.
The dummy's spine, which needs a precise amount of flexibility, is made out of rubber instead of metal, squeezed under immense pressure until it forms the right shape.
Then, of course, a dummy's bones need to be encased in the squishiness of flesh.
No single material suffices to replicate that distinctive human texture. Humanetics uses polyurethane, which can be anything from floppy to firm depending on the recipe; the pink goo can be spotted oozing out from the seams of metal molds. Vinyl, poured and baked into giant green ovens, acts as skin. Foam, whipped in milkshake mixers and poured into that vinyl to set, adds some cushiness.
Once they come out of their molds, the fleshy bits need a little finessing, and another team wields X-Acto knives, dremels and other tools to smooth surface imperfections.
"I am trimming a pelvis," explains Katie Burlovich, who is hunching over a torso-shaped object and buffing it with a sanding belt. I push her to be a little more direct. "Yes, I am working on a butt," she acknowledges.
I can't help but chuckle, and an amused Keck says that I have the same sense of humor as the school groups that come through on tours. "You can hear them whispering and pointing," he says.
If they only had a brain
After a little exfoliation, next all the parts get connected. Then the brand new body is shipped to a building in Farmington, Michigan, near Detroit, to acquire a nervous system.
"This is where we bring the dummies to life," Humanetics vice president Brad Baker says.
It's a very different space than the Huron plant. Instead of being filled with whirring and grinding, the air is quiet, as workers in dozens of open-air cubicles assemble tiny electronic parts under microscopes.
Their job is all about the many sensors that go inside the dummies, tucked inside of all those carefully manufactured body parts, to measure acceleration, force and other data points that capture what would happen to a human body in a crash.
All those sensors also need to be calibrated, which is done by hitting the dummies with a known force and seeing if those sensors report the right numbers. Heads are dropped from precise heights. Chests are struck with pendulums. Other parts are compressed by what's essentially a really big squishing machine, far taller than a person, that exacts a precise amount of pressure on a tiny metal sensor.
"Really precise, highly controlled," Baker says.
Once the dummies pass these tests, it's time for them to head out into the world — and take a ride.
A short trip to a hard place
Dummies are expensive — their price point can range from hundreds of thousands of dollars to more than $1 million for the newest top-of-the-line models.
The customers for these niche products are automakers, of course, who have to test their own products, as well as the federal government and third-party groups like the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a nonprofit funded by auto insurers that publishes safety ratings.
At the institute's test site in Virginia, 18 dummies are put through their paces week after week. The day I visit, two are buckled into a Subaru Crosstrek, getting ready to be slammed into a hunk of concrete and metal at 40 miles per hour. A dummy modeled on the average adult male is in the front seat, while one that's about the size of a 12-year-old is in the back seat.
But first, they need a round of face paint. Engineering technician Jamel Craig applies it with his fingers, pink on the right side, blue on the left — the paint will smear anywhere a dummy's head hits the vehicle's interior, showing the institute exactly where it made contact.
"We use clown paint," he says, chuckling. "From the makeup store."
These dummies have been around the block — many times. Dummies can crash almost indefinitely.
Tyler Ayers, who calibrates the dummies at IIHS, says that when he started 25 years ago, dummies were often badly damaged in these kinds of tests. But now, "it's becoming quite rare that they're getting damaged to where they have to be replaced," he says. "I just think it's a testament to what we're doing here, that the cars are getting much safer."
These days, automakers and safety groups are increasingly getting into virtual testing, using computer models to simulate crashes — which allows for a far wider range of body types and crash scenarios than physical tests can replicate.
But you will still need raw data to feed into those computer models. And for now, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety relies on real-world, physical tests for its safety ratings.
Today's test simulates a frontal collision where the cars are slightly offset from each other. The Subaru won't actually be moving under its own power. A hydraulic system powered by compressed nitrogen will propel it down a track and into the concrete barrier representing the oncoming car.
A countdown begins over a loudspeaker: "Test will commence in 3, 2, 1…"
There's a whining noise as the propulsion system accelerates the car smoothly forward. Within seconds, it slams into the crash barrier with startling violence.
Broken glass litters the floor of the crash test hall. Pink and blue clown paint is now smeared all over the driver's side airbag.
The dummies sit patiently, still buckled into their seats, as workers sweep up glass, hook up computers and take photos of the aftermath. The data from their sensors is already starting to get crunched, revealing how effectively the car cushioned them from the force of the collision.
And once it's all done, the dummies will be cleaned off, recalibrated — and ready to crash again.
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