Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and there's Jerry over there, and this
Speaker 1: is stuff you should know the podcast. All right, we've
Speaker 1: done one on air bags, right, Which one did we
Speaker 1: do that was all about like the crumple zones and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. That's a great question, Chuck. I've been
Speaker 1: really trying to figure that out. I think it must
Speaker 1: have been Pinto's what was it. I know that we
Speaker 1: talked a lot about car safety and engineering and how
Speaker 1: I don't know, Man, I don't know. I'm suddenly creeped out.
Speaker 1: Are you confident we have not done this one? I
Speaker 1: would put my confidence at I searched so far and wide,
Speaker 1: all right, which is we've three that is well above
Speaker 1: the fifty threshold that we required to possibly rerecording. Like,
Speaker 1: none of this, none of this seemed particularly familiar. We've
Speaker 1: definitely talked about something like crumple zones, that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: because we've talked about how cars we like I used
Speaker 1: to think they were pieces of junk now, but they're
Speaker 1: actually designed to come apart like that because in doing so,
Speaker 1: they protect the people inside. We've definitely talked about that,
Speaker 1: but and that really applies to what we're about to
Speaker 1: talk about. But the actual details of what we're about
Speaker 1: to talk about, I don't recognize them as familiar. Alright,
Speaker 1: forward forward we go. So so cars have become exponentially
Speaker 1: safer than they used to be. UM. There's, first of all,
Speaker 1: hats off to not only the house stuff Works article
Speaker 1: were working from UM, but also a Consumer Reports article
Speaker 1: on crash testing that was really great, and then one
Speaker 1: from Jelopnick that was a really great one about crash
Speaker 1: testing your are And on that Gelopnic article, that's a
Speaker 1: great website. It is, it's wonderful. UM. On that Gelopnic article,
Speaker 1: they posted a YouTube video that made the rounds like
Speaker 1: a few years back, UM, and it's a it's a
Speaker 1: two thousand nine Malibu versus a nine bel Air and
Speaker 1: they go head on and the the dummy and the
Speaker 1: Malibu is like what, I didn't even notice anything, and
Speaker 1: the person in the bell Air just disintegrates. Basically, the
Speaker 1: crash test dummy and the bell are just disintegrates. Because
Speaker 1: cars used to be made too to be sturdy. But
Speaker 1: that's really bad for you in the car nowadays, they're
Speaker 1: made to not be sturdy, and that moves the force
Speaker 1: and the energy of the impact around the car and
Speaker 1: not into you. And the reason why cars are so
Speaker 1: much better these days now is because we started crash
Speaker 1: testing them, and the people who test them, who crash
Speaker 1: test them, started telling the public, Hey, this car doesn't
Speaker 1: due very well in a crash test. Uh, this car
Speaker 1: does really great in a crash test. And people started
Speaker 1: to kind of sit up and listen and go, oh, wait,
Speaker 1: we can survive a crash now if we buy a
Speaker 1: certain car. Let's go buy that car. And then automakers
Speaker 1: started to try to keep up and catch up, and
Speaker 1: safety became an important thing. And again it was almost
Speaker 1: exclusively thanks to crash testing. Yeah, car maker said, I
Speaker 1: guess we all got to start making things go again
Speaker 1: to nanny state. All right, So let's go back a
Speaker 1: little bit. We'll talk very briefly about the history of
Speaker 1: crash testing, because, like you said, in the early days,
Speaker 1: it was basically, if a car performed well out there
Speaker 1: on the road, um, then great, that's kind of we
Speaker 1: care about driving the car, not crashing the car. Why
Speaker 1: would anyone care about that? And then in nineteen thirty four,
Speaker 1: General Motors said, you know what, maybe we should crash
Speaker 1: a car because it turns out that you can die
Speaker 1: when you crash these things, so maybe we should look
Speaker 1: into this. So GM held the very first barrier test
Speaker 1: at Milford Proving Ground in Michigan in n with an
Speaker 1: unoccupied vehicle, and they would do this in different ways.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they would like cartoon style, actually in both cases
Speaker 1: cartoon style, just like release the emergency brake and give
Speaker 1: it a push down the hill. Or they would say, hey, driver,
Speaker 1: get in there, and as you approach that brick wall,
Speaker 1: um jump out. And they said, okay, I guess that's fine. Um,
Speaker 1: how much are you gonna pay me for that? I
Speaker 1: don't worry about that, don't you a prisoner from a
Speaker 1: chain gang? Nothing? Right? So uh, these early tests, again,
Speaker 1: they weren't too protect people. They were just to try
Speaker 1: and make sure the car could hold up a little better.
Speaker 1: And so other car companies, as they started building cars,
Speaker 1: started doing this. They didn't have proving grounds necessarily, so
Speaker 1: sometimes they would even do this on public roads, which
Speaker 1: was nuts. Uh. And then a ninth fifty two, a
Speaker 1: man named Sam Alderson really changed the game when he
Speaker 1: founded Alderson Research Laboratories, which would later on become something
Speaker 1: you may have heard of called human eddics. Uh. They
Speaker 1: were doing they won the very first contract to create
Speaker 1: anthropomorphic dummies for testing airplanes and spacecraft, like ejection seats,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. And then eventually they said they
Speaker 1: were using like sandbags and stuff like that, and eventually
Speaker 1: they said, hey, wait a minute, you could do this
Speaker 1: in cars too. So he got together with Sierra Engineering,
Speaker 1: the Sierra Engineering Company, and created the very first crash
Speaker 1: test dummy, Sierra Sam. Oh, that's right. We talked about
Speaker 1: Sierra Sam in the Murphy's Law episode. Okay, maybe it's
Speaker 1: just a bunch of stuff cobbled together. It makes me
Speaker 1: think we did this one possible, But Sierra Sam came along.
Speaker 1: They applied all these concepts to automotive testing. And Sam
Speaker 1: Alderson is sort of a legend now. He side at
Speaker 1: the age of ninety and two thousand five and was
Speaker 1: posthumously inducted into the National Inventor's Halma Fame. In with
Speaker 1: a lot of inventions, but largely this crash testumy patent
Speaker 1: did one was the big one. Yeah, so was that
Speaker 1: the one that was called the high hybrid three um
Speaker 1: the Hybrid three and this is still human edics by
Speaker 1: the way, that makes these Yeah, they're they're like the Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like as good as it gets with crash test dummy, create,
Speaker 1: design and creation. Yeah, was when the hybrid three was
Speaker 1: first developed, and then I think they upgraded it in
Speaker 1: ninety one to take seatbelts into consideration, and then in
Speaker 1: ninety seven to take air bags into consideration. And now
Speaker 1: the standard and we'll get to why they did this,
Speaker 1: is the H three five F meaning fifth female. So
Speaker 1: the fifth, fifth percentile size wise female is the standard
Speaker 1: me that's used. Now, that's great, and that's a huge,
Speaker 1: huge progression because for decades and decades they used what
Speaker 1: was known as the fiftieth percentile male dummy, which which
Speaker 1: was yeah, five ft ten inches, hundred and seventy pounds.
Speaker 1: And he was introduced from what I saw in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies six, at a time when the average male in
Speaker 1: the United States was five ten hundred and seventy pounds. Well,
Speaker 1: the average male in the United States has not been
Speaker 1: five seventy pounds for a really long time. They the
Speaker 1: average males gained about twenty five pounds and shrunken inch
Speaker 1: since then, that's the average male in the United States now.
Speaker 1: But the problem is is like these crash testers were
Speaker 1: still using that that um fiftie percentile male male dummy
Speaker 1: even though it didn't apply. And that's not to say
Speaker 1: anything about child dummies, female dummies. Um they were. It
Speaker 1: was basically like you know how when they test a
Speaker 1: new drug, they tested on the healthiest, least vulnerable population
Speaker 1: and then say it works. That's exactly what the history
Speaker 1: of crash testing has done. Uh. And but only in
Speaker 1: the last I don't know, probably ten ten years or
Speaker 1: so have they really been like, no, we really need
Speaker 1: to expand the types of dummies that we're using. So
Speaker 1: they're coming up with they're using female dummies more frequently,
Speaker 1: child dummies more frequently, obese dummies because apparently an obese
Speaker 1: person is about seventy percent likelier to die in a
Speaker 1: car accident than a non obese person. So they're now
Speaker 1: creating obese dummies to get a better idea of just
Speaker 1: how safe these actually are and as close to a
Speaker 1: real world application as possible. Yeah, And I mean the
Speaker 1: way I read this is at some point they said, well,
Speaker 1: we need to make these safe for all drivers, So
Speaker 1: what's the most vulnerable driver probably and they all said, well,
Speaker 1: I guess a sixteen year old girl m is, you know,
Speaker 1: statistically most likely to be probably the smallest version of
Speaker 1: these dummies. So that's what they went with. They went
Speaker 1: with the fifth percentile UH female hybrid three. And I
Speaker 1: guess the reckoning is if it can be safe for them,
Speaker 1: then it can be safe for that dumb, average male.
Speaker 1: It's pretty great. Yeah, there's but it's still not required.
Speaker 1: There's actually a representative, a congresswoman from d C named
Speaker 1: Eleanor Holmes Norton, who just this past June introduced a
Speaker 1: bill that would require UM crash testers to also use
Speaker 1: UM female dummies too. So right now it's not it's
Speaker 1: not range. Of course they should use. Range is just
Speaker 1: sensible and so that you know, the people who do
Speaker 1: crash testing are aware of this and they're starting to.
Speaker 1: But there's one other thing I saw about crash test dummies. UM.
Speaker 1: One of the things they can't replicate is tissue damage,
Speaker 1: but even real damage like when when you do crash tests.
Speaker 1: We'll talk to about a little more detail in a second,
Speaker 1: but UM, when you use a dummy for that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, they're outfitted with loads of different kinds of sensors,
Speaker 1: hundreds of sensors, recording all this amazing data, and then
Speaker 1: they take that data and they they basically turned it
Speaker 1: into a statistical likelihood that that amount of force, that
Speaker 1: amount of acceleration um, that amount of g's suddenly pressing
Speaker 1: on your chest would cause an injury or not. That's
Speaker 1: what crash test dummies do for us. But they don't
Speaker 1: actually replicate like tissue damage or your leg falling off
Speaker 1: or anything like that um because they're made to be
Speaker 1: used over and over and over again so that they
Speaker 1: could be subjected to the kinds of stuff that would
Speaker 1: just destroy human body. So some crash testing chuck chuck.
Speaker 1: Some crash testing uses post mortem human subjects. I wondered
Speaker 1: if that's where this is going. A lot of post
Speaker 1: mortem human subjects, some of them embalmed, which we failed
Speaker 1: to mention in our embalming episode, some fresh. They call
Speaker 1: them fresh because an embalmed one is just not going
Speaker 1: to replicate the kind of yuck sure that a fresh
Speaker 1: one well. And so that's a huge part of crash testing,
Speaker 1: from what I can tell, is using post mortem human
Speaker 1: subjects as well. Wow, that's amazing um. And we should
Speaker 1: also point out maybe we'll take a break, but before
Speaker 1: we take one, we should point out that this that
Speaker 1: car companies do all kinds of internal crash testing before
Speaker 1: they get to the regulatory crash testing because you don't
Speaker 1: want to you don't want to fail those, So they
Speaker 1: they'll crash eighty two d new vehicles in a line
Speaker 1: before they even get to their regulatory bodies to do
Speaker 1: their official crashes. And what we're mainly talking about is
Speaker 1: those official crashes, but I imagine they're all pretty similar.
Speaker 1: Now we should also say those official crashes there, they're
Speaker 1: not even necessarily official. Basically, the NASH No Highway trans
Speaker 1: Traffic Safety Administration has a bunch of guidelines, some of
Speaker 1: them involving crashes, and then they basically say, these are
Speaker 1: the guidelines. You met you you car makers better meet them,
Speaker 1: but they don't go and actually like test the cars
Speaker 1: for that. The crashing that they're doing is beyond the
Speaker 1: minimum the law requires, so nobody's actually testing the the
Speaker 1: auto makers cars to to see that they meet the
Speaker 1: minimum requirements. It's just the threat of basically being sued
Speaker 1: into oblivion for not meeting those minimum standards is um
Speaker 1: is what keeps the car makers honest. And then that
Speaker 1: and then one other thing I saw from that Jelopnick
Speaker 1: article is the minimum legal standards that a car can
Speaker 1: be put out on an American road are so low
Speaker 1: that they they so vastly, like like under under meat, undersatisfy. Yes,
Speaker 1: thank you, Charles, They so vastly undersatisfy what the average
Speaker 1: American would be willing to get in and drive. That
Speaker 1: just you know what Americans want to drive as far
Speaker 1: as safety is concerned. Is one of is that that's
Speaker 1: what carmakers are meeting, not just the minimum legal requirements.
Speaker 1: So interesting, you're probably your car is probably going to
Speaker 1: exceed those minimum legal requirements. You don't really have to
Speaker 1: worry about that in the United States, right, and then
Speaker 1: we'll talk about this at the end. Their tests completely
Speaker 1: separate that done by the Insurance Institute for How We
Speaker 1: Safety that are even more different, more robusts. Great set up,
Speaker 1: my friend, Chuck, Great set up to you, my friend.
Speaker 1: Can we just stop now or do we have to
Speaker 1: come back? We probably already did this episode anyway, so
Speaker 1: we can just stop, all right, Well we'll be back
Speaker 1: right after this anyway. Well, now we're on the road
Speaker 1: driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing or
Speaker 1: two from Josh Chuck, you should know all right, all right,
Speaker 1: so we laid the groundwork here. We know they're crashing
Speaker 1: some cars a lot, all in the name of making
Speaker 1: things safe for us. But we know that they're not saying, uh,
Speaker 1: they're not like it's not like GM says, all right,
Speaker 1: here's here's the car. Go tell us if it's okay.
Speaker 1: It's it's a voluntary thing sort of um like good
Speaker 1: luck selling cars if you don't. But sure it's voluntary.
Speaker 1: And they're loaded with seven with sensors. Like you said,
Speaker 1: they're accelerometers, h and accelerometers are going to measure acceleration
Speaker 1: in a particular direction. They used this obviously to determine
Speaker 1: if you might get injured. Um. Acceleration is the rate
Speaker 1: at which speed changes. So if you're driving a car
Speaker 1: and uh, you let's say there were no air bags
Speaker 1: back in the day and no seat belts and your
Speaker 1: head hits that windshield, the acceleration from your head flying
Speaker 1: forward to hitting uh not zero because it's going to
Speaker 1: go through the windshield. Um, but it's gonna decrease really
Speaker 1: really fast, and that that rate of acceleration change is
Speaker 1: the danger, and making car safe is all about softening
Speaker 1: that and lessening that kinetic energy of your body and
Speaker 1: that car's energy going from whatever speed it's going through
Speaker 1: to zero. Yeah, because yeah, you and the car are
Speaker 1: both traveling the same speed and you you both have
Speaker 1: to stop pretty quickly. Um, you want to cut down
Speaker 1: in the car transferring it's kinetic energy to you, and
Speaker 1: then you want to cut down on your kinetic energy. Like,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna have to transfer your kinetic energy is something,
Speaker 1: let it be like an air bag or something like that,
Speaker 1: rather than the dashboard. Right. So that's why they have
Speaker 1: these accelerometers all over the place. They're in your head,
Speaker 1: they're in the chest, they're in the pelvis, they're in
Speaker 1: kind of everybody part you can think of their accelerometers.
Speaker 1: And it's it's neat. Like I was saying, like the
Speaker 1: the crush test dummies, the anthropomorphic test devices is what
Speaker 1: they're called in the industry. Um, they are getting more
Speaker 1: and more um bio fedelic like they're they're faithful to
Speaker 1: biology is basically what that word means. Um. And so
Speaker 1: you're you're finding crashed stummies. They are starting to have
Speaker 1: like simulated internal organs and all that stuff, because I mean,
Speaker 1: I can guess if you're in the industry, you probably
Speaker 1: don't really want to deal with post mortem human subjects.
Speaker 1: You would much rather have crush s st dummies that
Speaker 1: basically replicate the same things. But we're still a long
Speaker 1: way off from that. It's just on the horizon. They're
Speaker 1: starting to work on it now. But one other thing
Speaker 1: I saw, Chuck is they may not ever become widely
Speaker 1: used because three D modeling is so it's so rapidly
Speaker 1: advancing that all of this will probably in the next
Speaker 1: fifteen years. They will do crash test still, but it
Speaker 1: will be once, and it will be after running tons
Speaker 1: of computer simulations, and then they will just do it
Speaker 1: once in like the real world to make sure that
Speaker 1: the computer is right. But it'll probably all become virtual
Speaker 1: pretty soon because we're getting we're getting really good at
Speaker 1: at modeling humans getting good at modeling traffic accidents. So
Speaker 1: you put them together and you can kind of test
Speaker 1: cars based on the parameters that you just feed and
Speaker 1: you just make measurements on the cars and feed it
Speaker 1: into the computer and press enter and sit back, and
Speaker 1: you know, maybe have a Clark Bar. I was just
Speaker 1: in uh, northern California, in San Francisco, go in Wine Country,
Speaker 1: and just in San Francisco for the night. But in
Speaker 1: that one evening walking around, I saw probably four different um,
Speaker 1: I can't remember what it's called, but the Google self
Speaker 1: driving car concepts, the death car driving around town. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's it called US? I can't remember, but I just
Speaker 1: saw this car with like a big thing on the
Speaker 1: roof with like a spinner in it. And at first
Speaker 1: I thought it was a like maybe Google Earth or
Speaker 1: something or street view, and uh, I looked up what
Speaker 1: it was, and it is. It is a self driving
Speaker 1: concept car and they had people in them driving. Obviously
Speaker 1: at this stage I was like, wait a minute, no
Speaker 1: one's in that car. But it was definitely you know,
Speaker 1: when you walk around San Francisco, that's the testing ground
Speaker 1: for all that kind of stuff, so it's very interesting. Um.
Speaker 1: All right, so you got those accelerometers, you have load sensors, uh,
Speaker 1: they're gonna measure the amount of force during a crash.
Speaker 1: You have movement sensors um that you know, they're gonna
Speaker 1: sense the movement of the body and everything it's doing.
Speaker 1: And the really important thing within all this, and I
Speaker 1: think we talked about this in one of the other episodes,
Speaker 1: is these dummies are painted up and they're painted in
Speaker 1: the different body parts are painted with different colors, and
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty ingenious. Actually, something is an idea as
Speaker 1: simple as that can tell you so much because when
Speaker 1: they go to look in that car afterward and they see,
Speaker 1: you know, there's red paint here and there's blue paint there,
Speaker 1: they're gonna be like, well, how did that knee hit
Speaker 1: that part of the car, because that's the only place
Speaker 1: where there's blue paint is on the kneecap. I guess
Speaker 1: we got to figure this out. And so they look
Speaker 1: at the scuff marks and they can tell exactly what
Speaker 1: body part hit exactly what car part. I love that too,
Speaker 1: that we're just getting so much more advanced, but good
Speaker 1: old fashioned, like you know, putting pain or chalk on
Speaker 1: on the face to see what it hits is still
Speaker 1: just as useful as ever. All Right, So how did
Speaker 1: these crashes go? Oh? Well, there's a few things that
Speaker 1: you gotta do first. Um so, the the when when
Speaker 1: they're carrying out these crashes, the um ii h s uh.
Speaker 1: The insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the National Highway
Speaker 1: Traffic Safety Administration in the United States, those are the
Speaker 1: two groups that carry out the most crash testing. And
Speaker 1: they're both independent and they go buy their own cars
Speaker 1: and they just test them and then they tell everybody
Speaker 1: what the results are, and they have their own rating systems.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about all that in a minute. But
Speaker 1: the i h S. One of the first things they
Speaker 1: do is UM. They basically gout the car like they'll
Speaker 1: put they'll take the UM well, all the vital fluids out,
Speaker 1: I should say, they take out the anti freeze, they
Speaker 1: take out the oil, they take out the fuel, and
Speaker 1: then they replace it with like mineral spirits so that
Speaker 1: it still has the same weight and everything UM because
Speaker 1: it can be a pretty big mess when when you're
Speaker 1: carrying out one of these tests and there's no reason
Speaker 1: to get any is all over the place. You can
Speaker 1: go look and make a pretty good estimation of what
Speaker 1: it would have looked like just because the hose was
Speaker 1: ripped off. You don't need to see the anti freeze
Speaker 1: all over the floor, right, So they'll actually prep the
Speaker 1: car to get it ready. They measure it, they weigh
Speaker 1: it UM and they wanted to be as close to
Speaker 1: like a real life situation as possible, so they'll put
Speaker 1: different dummies UM in the car. Sometimes they fill it
Speaker 1: out with, you know, an adult male, fifty percentile male,
Speaker 1: fifth percentile female in the passenger UM, another fifth percent
Speaker 1: female in the in the back UM, and then the
Speaker 1: car is ready to go, they put it. They put
Speaker 1: all sorts of cameras all over the car as well
Speaker 1: as sensors to UM and they have all sorts of
Speaker 1: high speed UH cameras filming the whole thing as well,
Speaker 1: because you know, just like painting the face of the
Speaker 1: crash test dummy is really important, you know, using your eyes,
Speaker 1: like visually inspecting what happens. You as the human engineer,
Speaker 1: seeing this with your own eyes. There's stuff that you're
Speaker 1: gonna see that just wouldn't wouldn't be translated from the
Speaker 1: data that the sensors are picking up on the dummies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you if you're at home or driving your car
Speaker 1: right now, and you're thinking, well, wait a minute, guys,
Speaker 1: if they're taking all the gasoline and the oil out
Speaker 1: of the car, how does it go forward? When they
Speaker 1: dropped the cinder block on the accelerator and shut the
Speaker 1: door really fast and jump out of the way. Um,
Speaker 1: they're not doing that. The car doesn't have to be started,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to be running because the car is
Speaker 1: on a track and it is being pulled down a runway.
Speaker 1: And that all makes complete sense that this is operated
Speaker 1: by Pulley and not by an actual car being started
Speaker 1: and driven. All they need to know is that this
Speaker 1: thing is going to go thirty five into that wall
Speaker 1: or I guess in the case of the insurance group,
Speaker 1: I think they go forty right, so they get a
Speaker 1: little bit faster and they do different kinds of impacts
Speaker 1: they go. You know, I think the the for many
Speaker 1: many years, the gold standard was the head on collision,
Speaker 1: and so they have built cars over the years to
Speaker 1: withstand as best as possible that head on collision with
Speaker 1: another car or hitting that brick wall straight on. Like
Speaker 1: we've all seen the videos and and you think, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the worst of the worst. Of course, that's what
Speaker 1: you should prepare for, but it's pretty cool. The Um,
Speaker 1: what's the name of the insurance group in the eye,
Speaker 1: the i h S the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they started saying, and a lot of stuff was overhauled
Speaker 1: in ten. They started saying things like, well, maybe the
Speaker 1: worst crash is when two people are trying to turn
Speaker 1: through an intersection, or your left headlight meets up with
Speaker 1: their left head light and there's like just a bit
Speaker 1: of overlap and it's not a head on collision. Like,
Speaker 1: we're building these for a head on collisions, and what
Speaker 1: if there are weak points at these corners and they're right,
Speaker 1: that is a real danger. So they have found out
Speaker 1: through these crash tests of these partial uh not layovers
Speaker 1: what do they call them overlaps? Yeah, instead of a
Speaker 1: full head on collision, they were learning that some of
Speaker 1: those crashes can be worse, and so we need to
Speaker 1: start testing that stuff. And like, maybe it's not a
Speaker 1: straight t bone into the side of the car. You
Speaker 1: think of that as the worst thing, but what if
Speaker 1: it's forward a little bit or backward a little bit
Speaker 1: from that point? Yeah, Or you know if if you're
Speaker 1: doing a head on collision. It's so rare that two
Speaker 1: cars run perfectly, yeah, like like hood ornament to hood ornament,
Speaker 1: This is not how it happens. It's usually like, you know,
Speaker 1: the front bumper of one car into the other, and
Speaker 1: you know the car the auto industry. Car makers have
Speaker 1: been creating these crumple zones in the front that we're
Speaker 1: relying on, you know, that full front impact that the
Speaker 1: crash testers were testing for so that they could meet
Speaker 1: those standards, but they really weren't designing for the other
Speaker 1: real world stuff. And so the National Highway Traffic Safety
Speaker 1: Administration and the i h S started tested, making their
Speaker 1: tests a little differently, and all of a sudden, the
Speaker 1: automakers started not getting the marks that they were before,
Speaker 1: and so they kind of were forced to scramble to
Speaker 1: keep up, as we'll see, which is pretty great because
Speaker 1: it really shows that the people who run these crash
Speaker 1: tests and who actually do this work care about you
Speaker 1: and your family. When you're driving around in a car.
Speaker 1: They're not sitting on their laurels. Or they are. But
Speaker 1: then they eventually stopped sitting on their laurels and like
Speaker 1: rechallenge everybody again. Yeah, I think they were. They found
Speaker 1: that a lot of those sort of um diagonal hits
Speaker 1: were causing a lot of like pretty catastrophic leg injuries, right,
Speaker 1: and so they had to kind of reconfigure things um
Speaker 1: inside the car. And you know, modern cards are so
Speaker 1: you know, I think I bought my first new car
Speaker 1: of my life a few years ago when I bought
Speaker 1: my Volvo. And um, you know, balbos are known for
Speaker 1: their safety anyway, and um, these things, I mean, they
Speaker 1: have all sort of an all. Most modern cars on
Speaker 1: the market now have these where they're breaking automatically for
Speaker 1: you and they're helping you stay in your lane and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. But you know, if you do a
Speaker 1: certain move in this car, um, your seat belt is
Speaker 1: called pretension. They have pretension ers and the seat belt
Speaker 1: that will tighten down on you right before an impact.
Speaker 1: And I've had that thing tightened down on me before, man,
Speaker 1: and it's a little disconcerting, Like, you know, it's for
Speaker 1: your safety, but when you're not expecting it and you
Speaker 1: don't get into a crash and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you're like and your seat belt cranks down on you. Um.
Speaker 1: They also have something called a forced limitter that is
Speaker 1: going to work in hand in hand with that pretension
Speaker 1: or to make sure that they you know, it doesn't
Speaker 1: just pretension through your chest into the back seat and
Speaker 1: so that all happens just before the air bag. It's
Speaker 1: all timed out like by the millisecond to tighten down
Speaker 1: that seat belt to try and keep you from going
Speaker 1: forward at all, and then the air bag comes out,
Speaker 1: so when you do go forward, even that'll and you know,
Speaker 1: you can listen to the airbags episode for all the
Speaker 1: detail there, but they work hand in hand to make
Speaker 1: sure you that you're slowing that kinetic energy down as
Speaker 1: slowly and evenly as you can. They work hand in
Speaker 1: de gloved hand hand and grass And yeah, you could
Speaker 1: you like seat belts that do things like that? You
Speaker 1: like airbags? Thank crash testers who basically created who demonstrated
Speaker 1: the need for that, and automakers responded because people who
Speaker 1: buy cars like you and me said, oh, yeah, I'd
Speaker 1: like to to live. Yeah, I think my car even
Speaker 1: has it has a built in booster seat in the
Speaker 1: middle for my daughter, which she's finally old enough to
Speaker 1: ride in. And when that seat is unhooked and engage,
Speaker 1: you just kind of pop a little lever and push
Speaker 1: it into place. It's uh, the side curtain air bags
Speaker 1: raise so because they know that the air bag will
Speaker 1: hit the child in a in a safer way basically
Speaker 1: because the kid is in there. It's really it's amazing,
Speaker 1: like how much how far safety has come well inside
Speaker 1: impact airbags. And there was another development that that came
Speaker 1: out of crash testing too, was not just the existence
Speaker 1: of side impact airbags, but you know once those were created,
Speaker 1: they were they they came about because of the crash
Speaker 1: testers suddenly doing like t bone testing, like side impact tests.
Speaker 1: But now they've also realized that, um, if you hit
Speaker 1: like the front corner of your car, like saying a
Speaker 1: telephone pole, Um, it's going to spin you around. You're
Speaker 1: gonna start rotating around the telephone pole, and you might
Speaker 1: slide off of that front airbag coming out of your
Speaker 1: your steering wheel. So what they and they saw that
Speaker 1: on crash tests without a side impact right, so that
Speaker 1: they realized they went to the automakers and said, hey,
Speaker 1: you should probably have the side impact curtains come down
Speaker 1: when there's this front bumper impact to like on a
Speaker 1: telephone poll, because people are going to slide off and
Speaker 1: you want the side impact or bag to be there
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, and then the stressed out engineer says, well,
Speaker 1: maybe the whole car should just be one giant airbag.
Speaker 1: Would that make you happy? Get out of here. That
Speaker 1: was a great stressed out engineer impression. And then the
Speaker 1: uh the people say, yeah, actually, that's not a bad
Speaker 1: idea to put him everywhere. Who was that? Was it?
Speaker 1: Dennis Leary? What that was? A stand up comedian who's like,
Speaker 1: won't they should just all beside? They should all just
Speaker 1: be really I think so, Well, that just shows how
Speaker 1: easy it can be to steal a bit. Yeah accidentally, right, yea,
Speaker 1: you owe Dennis Leary five dollars? All right, I'll pay
Speaker 1: him right after this ad break. Okay, well, now we're
Speaker 1: on the road, driving in your truck. Want to learn
Speaker 1: a thing or two from Josh Chuck stuff you should know?
Speaker 1: All right? Okay, so we never really said what happens
Speaker 1: in the in the crash test. Um. There's a few
Speaker 1: different ones that are carried out, depending on whether you're
Speaker 1: hanging around the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's crash testing
Speaker 1: site or the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's crash test site,
Speaker 1: but they're very similar. Um. A lot of people look
Speaker 1: to the i h S is maybe being the gold
Speaker 1: standard and the Safety Administration is being more government bureaucracy,
Speaker 1: but they're both doing pretty good work. If you, um,
Speaker 1: both of them really rely on the front crash because
Speaker 1: those happen a lot, and when they do happen, they
Speaker 1: can have pretty serious consequences for the passengers of the car.
Speaker 1: So the Traffic Safety Administration they do they do one
Speaker 1: UM and there is a full impact where they drag
Speaker 1: the car at thirty five hour into a concrete barrier
Speaker 1: and the whole, the whole hood, the whole front bumper
Speaker 1: is involved in the impact the i h S And
Speaker 1: this is one reason why they're kind of looked at
Speaker 1: ISS maybe being a little better. Um. They they do
Speaker 1: parts where the front bumper only a percentage is used,
Speaker 1: and they do two different crash tests. They do one
Speaker 1: where of the front bumper so it would be like
Speaker 1: left headlight to left headlight kind of crash head on collision.
Speaker 1: And then they do another one that's that involves more
Speaker 1: of the bumper and UM one of them. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think the Traffic Safety Administration does those as well.
Speaker 1: Now right, Okay, so they got on board. Yeah, finally
Speaker 1: they said, okay, we really need to kind of consider
Speaker 1: this because will do run into um, a pole, a
Speaker 1: telephone pole once in a while. Like they're these these
Speaker 1: groups are trying to recreate real world scenarios as much
Speaker 1: as possible to see how cars hold up, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again to reiterate, the I I h S does
Speaker 1: an extra five miles per hour forty as opposed to
Speaker 1: thirty five. UM. There is an injury classification system, UH
Speaker 1: that's used from one to six, one being minor cuts
Speaker 1: and bruises all the way up to fatal. And that
Speaker 1: is not the star rating. That's just totally dealing with
Speaker 1: the kind of injuries that somebody may like the likelihood
Speaker 1: of what kind of injuries is what they're trying to
Speaker 1: measure at least. Yeah, there was a group called the
Speaker 1: UM American or no, the Association for Advancement of Automotive
Speaker 1: Medicine that came up with that scale, the abbreviated Injury scale,
Speaker 1: and there is a lot that goes into it, and
Speaker 1: they were kind enough to basically create a handbook that
Speaker 1: they shared with these car testers and car makers UM
Speaker 1: so that they could they could take this data and
Speaker 1: translate it into injuries so they could say, like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: the crash test dummy had a load of you know,
Speaker 1: five million Newton's on what would be the femur, and
Speaker 1: so the femur would have just snapped in eight pieces
Speaker 1: so that would be this number, and so that that
Speaker 1: abbreviated Injuries Report UM is taken into account and translated
Speaker 1: further into the rating systems because the National Highway Traffic
Speaker 1: Safety Administration basically looks at how the car holds up
Speaker 1: in producing injuries, and then the i h S looks
Speaker 1: at how the car holds up and crashes as far
Speaker 1: as injuries goes. And then also the other UM, the
Speaker 1: other occupant um safety stuff too, like like the seatbelts,
Speaker 1: the airbags, all of that stuff, right, And you mentioned
Speaker 1: in is when things and it's it's kind of horrifying
Speaker 1: to think of they were doing good work up until.
Speaker 1: It's not like it was it's willy nilly or anything.
Speaker 1: But when you look at all the changes they've made since,
Speaker 1: you're kind of like, man, it took that long to
Speaker 1: start considering some of this stuff because it still seems
Speaker 1: a little behind the curve even with the updates. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as far as body types and all that stuff, for sure. Um,
Speaker 1: So they change things in the new star ratings came
Speaker 1: out in eleven, and cars that were previously getting four
Speaker 1: and five star ratings in every category, in all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, we're getting like three stars maybe or maybe
Speaker 1: even two stars under the new system. And that's because
Speaker 1: they have these new injury parameters. They're adding these different
Speaker 1: tests now, um they're using the different size dummies. They're
Speaker 1: now using that again, that small adult female instead of
Speaker 1: the five ten one seventy email. Who if I ever
Speaker 1: weigh literally a hundred, because I'm about five ten. If
Speaker 1: ever weigh a hundreds eventy on the nose, I don't
Speaker 1: know that. I'm either going to try and gain five
Speaker 1: or lose five. I don't want to be one seventy
Speaker 1: on the nose. Okay, you don't want to be median.
Speaker 1: I get that. I don't want to, And hey, I'm
Speaker 1: doing a great job so far, nowhere close to right.
Speaker 1: You're just playing it safe. Yeah yeah, But if I
Speaker 1: go in some massive weight loss campaign, I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna stop at like one eighty and be like I
Speaker 1: like a little chunk around the middle. That's what I'm
Speaker 1: going for is one eight as well? Maybe yeah that's
Speaker 1: a good way. But you're you're like six ft though, right,
Speaker 1: I am five ft eleven and a half. It just
Speaker 1: irks me and getting smaller, yeah, just like the average
Speaker 1: mail yep, you'll be five ten one day, my friend.
Speaker 1: Do you think so? Now? Probably not that short. But
Speaker 1: I used to be a solid five tin and now
Speaker 1: I'm like five note and a half. What happens? What
Speaker 1: are you're just getting compressed? I don't know. I think
Speaker 1: that's a good uh. I mean you shrink as you
Speaker 1: get older. That's a good shorty, I think, Okay, why
Speaker 1: do you shrink? I don't know. We'll have to find
Speaker 1: out and tell everybody. Uh. Some of the other key
Speaker 1: parts of the post is uh. The NHTSA started assigning
Speaker 1: a single overall safety score from front side and rollover,
Speaker 1: with front having the heaviest weight of that overall score.
Speaker 1: They started started putting in these additional measures for uh,
Speaker 1: for neck extension, chest deflection, and femur and I think
Speaker 1: they didn't have that before, which is kind of horrifying. Uh.
Speaker 1: What else? I think they added the poll test? Yeah,
Speaker 1: running into polls. It's a big one too. One of
Speaker 1: the things that they did that really change things is
Speaker 1: that rather than just getting an absolute score based on
Speaker 1: their criteria, they started pitting cars against one another. Two.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's a that's a huge one. That was
Speaker 1: an enormous change because now they're like, okay, you want
Speaker 1: to be the best, well you've got to be the
Speaker 1: best in the industry. You can't just be like, you know, yes,
Speaker 1: we're all going to meet this. And that was one
Speaker 1: reason why those two thousand ten changes were aid and
Speaker 1: one reason why the i h S keeps changing its tests.
Speaker 1: They're not like like any time they they they create
Speaker 1: a new test or they create a new standard, all
Speaker 1: of the automakers rushed to meet that UM and some
Speaker 1: of them may already meet it or come close. They
Speaker 1: won't have to do too much to meet those higher
Speaker 1: standards because they're already over designing beyond what were the
Speaker 1: requirements before. But the rest of the industry, if you
Speaker 1: don't know by now, just from like our Pinto episode alone,
Speaker 1: the auto industry is really lazy sometimes when it comes
Speaker 1: to overdesigning UM. They will sometimes meet minimum requirements even
Speaker 1: when they're exceeding minimum requirements. And this is a good
Speaker 1: example of that because with the n h T S A,
Speaker 1: when they're doing crash tests, they're basically just doing it
Speaker 1: for fun. This is again not this is not law.
Speaker 1: Like you can get a one star rating from the
Speaker 1: n h T A T S A and you're fine,
Speaker 1: like it just looks bad to your consumer. But the
Speaker 1: fact that it looks bad you're consumed humor means that
Speaker 1: the automaker will scramble to try to get that five
Speaker 1: star rating. But then they'll they'll hack it, they'll figure
Speaker 1: it out, Like all we have to do is focus
Speaker 1: on the whole front crumple zone. We don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about the driver's side of the passenger side of
Speaker 1: the bumper. We just have to worry about the whole
Speaker 1: front because that's what the n h T s A
Speaker 1: does when they're doing tests, and if we can meet
Speaker 1: that standard, we'll get that five stars. Well, when the
Speaker 1: n h T s A and the i h S
Speaker 1: change their standards all of a sudden, the industry has
Speaker 1: to scramble to catch up to become like that gold standard.
Speaker 1: And they do it again and again and again to
Speaker 1: keep safety getting better and better and better, and then
Speaker 1: also finding new things that had been overlooked before to
Speaker 1: make those parts of cars safer as well, which is
Speaker 1: pretty cool. I mean, like this is again, this is superfectly.
Speaker 1: None of this is mandated. It's not mandatory. No one,
Speaker 1: no car maker has to cement us. They actually don't
Speaker 1: even have a choice because these agencies are going and
Speaker 1: buying their own cars and crashing them. And there's nothing
Speaker 1: legal about that, um, but they just the fact that
Speaker 1: somebody's out there doing this, I think is just such
Speaker 1: a great It's just a great example of people caring
Speaker 1: about other people. Yeah, and you know, it's gotten to
Speaker 1: the point where if you have a newer car with
Speaker 1: the air bags and such and safety standards and you
Speaker 1: and you wear your seat belt. Um, there are outliers,
Speaker 1: of course, with just these horrific car wrecks that do happen.
Speaker 1: But if you're just talking about a standard, even bad
Speaker 1: car crash, you are gonna fare pretty well these days
Speaker 1: thanks to the work that all these people have done
Speaker 1: over the years. Um, again, there are outliers, but uh,
Speaker 1: they have made cars really, really incredibly safe. Um to
Speaker 1: get into what I would just describe as sort of
Speaker 1: a normal car wreck and not a fender bender, like
Speaker 1: you know, a carrect that even might look pretty gnarly,
Speaker 1: and you see him on the road, you know, you
Speaker 1: see two cars You're like, oh my gosh, and you
Speaker 1: see people standing outside like giving the officer there you know,
Speaker 1: the account of what happened, and you're just like, man,
Speaker 1: there it is right there, Like those people are are
Speaker 1: standing there talking to somebody, whereas you know, two decades
Speaker 1: ago they were probably you know, maybe not even alive.
Speaker 1: Which is just a testament to all the work they've done.
Speaker 1: Um one way, they really need to ramp it up.
Speaker 1: And I couldn't tell if they are actually even doing
Speaker 1: this testing yet, but some of that stuff you sent
Speaker 1: pointed out says that like there's still sort of crashing
Speaker 1: similar cars into one another. Oh yeah, that's a big one,
Speaker 1: and that's a big deal these days when you've got
Speaker 1: these you know what happens when a suburban crashes into
Speaker 1: a Honda Civic. Um, these are two very much mismatched cars,
Speaker 1: not just in overall size, but bumper height is a
Speaker 1: big deal, and these bumpers are made to hit one
Speaker 1: another and then operate accordingly from there. If a bumper
Speaker 1: is going over the other bumper, uh, we often happens
Speaker 1: in these cases of a big suv or a big
Speaker 1: truck compared to a smaller car. Uh. That this is
Speaker 1: where you're going to see a lot of like kind
Speaker 1: of bad injuries happening. And I don't know if they're
Speaker 1: actually testing for that, if they're just talking about, like, hey,
Speaker 1: what do we need to do to test the stuff
Speaker 1: right exactly? UM. I don't know if they are yet either,
Speaker 1: but they seem to be on the precipice, if not
Speaker 1: another one. Um. Another criticism I've seen of both groups
Speaker 1: is that they're they're testing these at thirty five miles
Speaker 1: an hour forty miles an hour. Everybody's like, well, I'll
Speaker 1: drive a heck of a lot faster than forty miles
Speaker 1: an hour. What would my car doing sixty, you know,
Speaker 1: or seventy or eighty something like that. Um, And that's
Speaker 1: a that is a big criticism. The both agencies pushed
Speaker 1: back and say, this is this is where most of
Speaker 1: the accidents happen. I'm sure they're basing that in statistics,
Speaker 1: and I would probably tend to say, okay, yes, but
Speaker 1: what about the you know, maybe that's fifty one percent,
Speaker 1: but what about the fort that is, you know, much
Speaker 1: faster than that. And I think if they did start
Speaker 1: crash testing at higher speeds, cars would be showing to
Speaker 1: be kind of pitiful and in handling that, and maybe
Speaker 1: automakers would start to scramble to catch up to that too. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: because they're kind of working on the assumption, which may
Speaker 1: be correct, that most of these wrecks are happening in
Speaker 1: like neighborhoods and not necessarily on the expressway. But what
Speaker 1: about the guy who's driving sixty through the neighborhood. You know,
Speaker 1: they're they're saying like this, this is assuming people are
Speaker 1: driving the speed limit, which is not the case. And
Speaker 1: we have a street very near my house that is, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not a highway, but people drive like
Speaker 1: it's a highway because it's really long and straight and
Speaker 1: sort of runs between all these residential neighborhood streets, and
Speaker 1: you know, people go sixty seventy. It's just ridiculously. No, dude,
Speaker 1: I've extra this like point where I've turned into an old,
Speaker 1: middle aged and screamed, too fast in your neighborhood. Hellow
Speaker 1: down somebody driving too asked it's it's man, and it
Speaker 1: is very like I can't, I can't help it. I
Speaker 1: can't not do it. Yeah, And I live um near
Speaker 1: an intersection, and there's a curve in my street before
Speaker 1: the intersection, so people will come around the curve and
Speaker 1: if they see the lightest green, they will just hammer
Speaker 1: it to try and make that light, and like all
Speaker 1: of a sudden they're going like literally like fifty miles
Speaker 1: in front of my house, and I just, man, it
Speaker 1: makes me so mad. Yeah, I'm with you. It's so
Speaker 1: angry about that stuff. There's just no point because well
Speaker 1: it's because it's you know, you know the deal. Sure,
Speaker 1: people driving that fast to save what ends up being
Speaker 1: thirty seconds to the stoplight. It's just when you outweigh
Speaker 1: risks and what you're gaining, Like, even if you think
Speaker 1: you're in a hurry, you're really not. In the end
Speaker 1: getting there that much quicker, like a minute or two
Speaker 1: isn't that big of a difference. And it's just it's
Speaker 1: unnerming that people take that kind of risk just to
Speaker 1: make a light. Nice. Nice, don't do it people. That's
Speaker 1: my soapbox moment. Yeah, I think you just stay up
Speaker 1: there on that soapbox, buddy. That is a big one.
Speaker 1: Can I come down to P No, you've made your bed,
Speaker 1: now you have to stand in it. P in it?
Speaker 1: You got anything else? I got nothing else. I got
Speaker 1: one more thing. One of the reasons why I also
Speaker 1: love the I h S is the highest possible rating
Speaker 1: you could get from them is just good, yeah, poor,
Speaker 1: marginal acceptable, and then good? How do we do good? Nothing?
Speaker 1: Nothing better, no exclamation points, no comfetti. Uh. Well, since
Speaker 1: Chuck and I both said good, that means, of course,
Speaker 1: everybody's time for a listener mail. Uh. This is from
Speaker 1: our Trepid Nation episode, which just dropped today in real time.
Speaker 1: Hey guys, I was listening to the episode on tree panning,
Speaker 1: and I feel like I am such adult. I literally
Speaker 1: had never thought of craniotomies? Is the modern version of
Speaker 1: uh tree penning? Treppening? What did we end up with
Speaker 1: tree panning? I don't know. Trip tree painting doesn't sound
Speaker 1: familiar trip panning, even though I knew about the ancient practice.
Speaker 1: This is really funny because I had a craniotomy. I
Speaker 1: have a Chiari malformation syndrome. I have kilary. I think
Speaker 1: it's c H I a r I, and I bet
Speaker 1: you it's not Ri. You gotta say it like an
Speaker 1: Italian person. Chi malformation syndrome, and part of decompression surgery
Speaker 1: was a crany craniotomy. This totally computes with the idea
Speaker 1: of ancient people using trip panning to relieve chronic headaches.
Speaker 1: Since one of Ki's main symptoms is terrible, terrible, constant headaches.
Speaker 1: Something else you said in the episode helped me make
Speaker 1: sense of something my neurosurgeon said too. When discussing the
Speaker 1: diagnosis and what the decompression surgery would achieve, he briefly
Speaker 1: said that some people think of surgery actually can help
Speaker 1: cure depression, even though there's no evidence. I had never
Speaker 1: heard of that and certainly wasn't looking for that for
Speaker 1: that case. Myself just wanted to stop falling over. But
Speaker 1: you mentioned in the episode that there were a lot
Speaker 1: of internet rumors that trepanning can help with depression, So
Speaker 1: now I know why he said that. Anyway, there's a
Speaker 1: fun I've said listen to and kind of see myself in.
Speaker 1: So thanks for that. Keep up the good stuff that
Speaker 1: is from Amanda. Awesome, Amanda. I'm really glad we could
Speaker 1: kind of connect the pieces for you. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: hope you're doing well. Yeah, me too. I hope you're
Speaker 1: not following over any longer and you don't have headaches. Agreed.
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with us, like
Speaker 1: Amanda did, then you can send us an email to
Speaker 1: Stuff Podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff You Should
Speaker 1: Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.