2009
05.27
05.27
Above is a modern crash test dummy. If you’ve been involved in a serious accident lately (and lived), you have him/her to thank. Below the jump are his/her ancestors getting slaughtered en masse in some fairly shocking yet thoroughly entertaining GM archive footage. One watch and you can see why General Motors did everything in its power (including the use of hookers!) to discredit Ralph Nader after the latter published Unsafe At Any Speed in 1965. Jump.
The guy falling out the door and getting run over is simultaneously awesome, hilarious and disturbing.
Yeah, I’ve watched it four times now.
That’s chilling yet also funny. I’d be curious to see a modern small car (say a Fit or something similar) be paired up with one of those behemoths in a head-on test.
Both entertaining and chilling at same time. I love classic cars but, this is reminder of how far we’ve come as far as safety.
Let’s make that six times
Here’s a question from a real dummy–if these were GM tests, why are they almost always running Mopar-on-Mopar (possibly Ford-on-Ford at one point) action?
Etmccaus, I’m going to guess that it’s because the person that compiled the video didn’t do their research quite thoroughly enough.
A lot of the cars say “UCLA” on them so that’s probably who performed the tests.
1) Who cares?
2) GM (probably) paid UCLA Science-Dudes to conduct the tests and UCLA used whatever clunkers they had on hand.
Not GM, it’s UCLA test footage over the years; 1960, 1964, 1967 cars provided at the time for research by Chrysler & Ford, or purchased with research grant money. 1960 & 1964 tests were for unrestrained occupants, ‘67 was more into head restraints and fuel tanks.
Note that the cars held up pretty well, considering the impact forces, but the occupants received little consideration until these films were made public back in the day.