• Samuel Alderson, is the first person to invent the crash test dummy. With the field of bio-mechanics being brand new in the 1940’s and 50’s, he created the first dummy in 1949, named the “Sierra Sam.”² This dummy was originally used to test aircraft ejection seats, aviation helmets, and pilot safety harnesses, but not automobiles at the time. He would then create his own company in 1952, Alderson Research Laboratories, where he developed dummies for the U.S. military to test parachutes and later, NASA would use his dummies to simulate the splash down of the Apollo nose cones. ³ He would eventually be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2013 for this invention. ⁴

• In the 1950’s, researchers began to investigate human injuries that may occur during car collisions, and in order to assess the injuries, the researchers would study the injury bio-mechanics of a human that was recently in a collision. First, researchers used human cadavers, also known as dead human bodies, in order to collect data from car collisions. Animals and human volunteers would come later in the data collection process. ⁵ The experiments with these volunteers/animals provided important data for collision safety, but they would be disbanded due to moral and ethical restrictions. ⁶

• The crash test dummy would serve as a substitute for a human during a car collision. The purpose for them is to determine the severity of injuries a body may endure during a collision. In order to improve a car’s ability to reduce injuries and potentially protect the individual as a whole, it is necessary to understand the bio-mechanical response of a body during a collision. ⁷ This is where the crash test dummy takes its role and why it has become so important in the automobile industry.

• In the 1970’s, the Hybrid I and II of the crash test dummy would be created for automobile use. Following these versions, in 1977, General Motors created the Hybrid III which had improved neck flexibility and head rotation to more closely simulate that of a human body. ⁹ This model would become the industry standard for testing to comply with government frontal impact regulations and airbag safety in 1997. ¹⁰ The Hybrid III of the crash test dummy is the model that the automobile industry still uses today due to it’s bio-mechanical response structure being so closely to a human’s response during a collision.

1. Denton ATD. n.d. How Crash Tests Help Bring Traffic Deaths Down. Accessed October 30, 2019. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120628434.
2. Physics, APS. “October 21, 1914: Birth of Samuel W. Alderson, Inventor of the Crash Test Dummy.” American Physical Society. Accessed December 2, 2019. https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201110/physicshistory.cfm.
3. “Samuel Alderson.” NIHF Inductee Samuel Alderson Invented the Crash Test Dummy. Accessed December 2, 2019. https://www.invent.org/inductees/samuel-alderson.
4. “Samuel Alderson.” NIHF Inductee Samuel Alderson
5. Xu, Tao, Xiaoming Sheng, “Development and Validation of Dummies and Human Models Used in Crash Test”, Applied Bionics and Biomechanics 2018 (November 13, 2018), 1
6. Xu, Tao, Xiaoming Sheng, “Development and Validation”, 2
7. Ibid., 2
8. Ginter, Peter. n.d. Have Crash Tests Ever Used Live (or Dead) Human Occupants? Accessed December 2, 2019. https://auto.howstuffworks.com/car-driving-safety/safety-regulatory-devices/human-crash-test-dummy2.htm.
9. Physics, APS. “October 21, 1914: Birth of Samuel W. Alderson”
10. Bellis, Mary, “The History of Crash Test Dummies, Starting With Sierra Sam”, ThoughtCo, accessed Decemeber 2, 2019, https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-crash-test-dummies-1992406.