Toyota crash-tested a new Prius hybrid car in front of our editor and then brought him to meet its crash test dummies.
BACK when I was a silly little boy, I was scared of department store mannequins. In the week after I saw them for the first time in Oriental Emporium, I suffered daily nightmares of being chased by unseeing mannequins down an endless flight of stairs.
Decades later in 2016, my old fear of mannequins has been replaced by new respect for their high-tech relatives working in the crash test departments of car companies.
Because I witnessed a crash test conducted by Toyota at its Higashi-Fuji Technical Centre.
About half of the 1600 crash tests carried out by Toyota in Japan last year were done at this facility, located in Shizuoka Prefecture’s Susono City.
Two crash test dummies were on the front seats of the stationary fourth-generation Prius, which was hit at an oblique frontal angle by a 2.5-tonne dolly moving at 90km/h.
That’s like a V8 Toyota Land Cruiser barrelling at expressway speed towards a sitting steel duck at a traffic junction.
Imagining the impact was dramatically different from watching it live.
Even waiting for it was climactic, because there was a countdown by a deadpan female voice that echoed through the massive hall. It was like a classic Hollywood missile launch scene.
“10… 9… 8… 7… 6… 5… 4… 3… 2… 1… start”. What started was the intense whirring of a presumably heavy-duty industrial cable nearby pulling some ominous object on wheels.
After what felt like another 10 seconds of anticipation as the approaching object was accelerated to 90km/h, it dashed into view about 100 metres away from the platform I was standing on.
The dolly slammed into the front left corner of the Prius. There was a loud bang upon impact, which I expected.
What I didn’t expect was the simultaneous and equally loud bang of the car’s front and side airbags deploying promptly within the cabin, whose windscreens and closed windows did little to muffle the sound of multiple airbags ballooning.
The violent collision shattered glass, plastic and metal, and scattered parts of the Prius’ exterior onto the floor.
Soon after, a team of technicians moved in. There was a flurry of activity around the smashed Prius – the men picked up bits and pieces of broken bodywork, looked for fluid leaks from the 1.8-litre engine and fuel tank (there were none), and hooked up diagnostic equipment to the vehicle.
One of the checks was on the Prius’ high-voltage battery pack, to confirm that its relay had been cut automatically in the crash.
This feature ensures that in the event of an accident, the hybrid system’s components wouldn’t cause any electric shock to occupants or rescuers.
IMAGINING THE IMPACT WAS DRAMATICALLY DIFFERENT FROM WATCHING IT LIVE, AND EVEN WAITING FOR IT WAS CLIMACTIC.
Incidentally, crash test cars like this one have so-called safety petrol in their tank.
It’s a non-flammable substitute for potentially more dangerous petroleum, and it’s used to gauge the fire risk (based on fuel leak) as part of the crash test assessment.
Meanwhile, the busy personnel continued to focus on the Prius instead of its two post-crash occupants, seated askew behind the protective white drapes of the supplemental restraint systems that deployed.
When the technicians turned their attention to the dummies, the first task was to reach them.
With the bonnet of the car damaged so badly and the front left fender crumpled into a metallic mess, I wondered whether the driver’s door (it was a left-hand-drive Prius) could be opened without using a crowbar.
A Toyota technician, wearing safety gloves, grasped the door handle and pulled the door open.
He didn’t need to tug at it, although the hinges were a little stiff as the door was opened to its widest angle, due to the deformed wheel arch. The other three doors were opened easily.
The cabin’s crashworthy structural integrity had done its job. And the two crash test dummies on board the doomed car did their job, too.
After the crash test, I visited the “break room” where about 50 of the facility’s 80 dummies were housed, awaiting their next hazardous assignment.
The dummies, made by American firm Humanetics, come in various shapes and sizes, and represent different ages and genders – adult males, adult females, children, teenagers and even pregnant women.
The dummy that stood out was the strapping one with the word “THOR” printed clearly on its chest.
The Test device for Human Occupant Restraint (that’s the acronym) might not be the most heroic in the business, but it’s certainly one of the most expensive.
THOR is one of Toyota’s 15 crash test dummies that cost over 100 million yen each (S$1.3 million). These are state-of- the-art anthropomorphic mannequins, equipped with sophisticated sensors and accurate instruments.
The cheapest and most common crash test dummy in Toyota’s employ is the 18 million yen (S$239,000) Hybrid III, an international model used by major automakers.
The two dummies in the crash- tested Prius were Hybrid IIIs.
These things have to be tough, because they’re meant to be reused over and over again.
They’ll be serviced after every crash test and their parts replaced if needed. A more thorough “health check” is performed on the dummy after every 10 crash tests.
As long as the dummies remain compatible with current crash test requirements and help car makers to meet automotive safety regulations, they’ll be in service for a long time.
The longest-serving dummy in Toyota’s Higashi-Fuji Technical Centre is already 10 years old.
After knowing these crash test dummies better and seeing a crash test in person, I now drive even more defensively to avoid being a real-life crash test dummy myself.
I NOW DRIVE EVEN MORE DEFENSIVELY TO AVOID BEING A REAL-LIFE CRASH TEST DUMMY MYSELF.
DIGITISED DUMMIES
In addition to physical mannequins, Toyota also uses its own computer programme to simulate the human body in a vehicle collision. Known as THUMS (Total HUman Model for Safety), its development started in 1997 and the first version was introduced in 2000. Upgrades in 2008, 2010 and 2015 made THUMS progressively more useful in its simulation of bodily injury and biological response.
THUMS AM50 (adult male 50th percentile), for example, represents an average-build 35-year-old man who’s 175cm in height and 77kg in weight.
He’s able to adopt a sitting or standing posture, so he can be an occupant in the cabin of a vehicle caught in an accident or a pedestrian who gets hit by a car.
The virtual pain inflicted on the digital individual is in the form of bone fracture, ligament rupture, brain trauma, internal organ damage and whiplash. Enter the binary code for “ouch”.
According to Toyota, many other automakers have adopted THUMS, but it “would like to refrain from disclosing specific user info”. What Toyota is willing to reveal is that in the Asia Pacific region, 12 automotive companies and 24 research institutes use THUMS.
If the simulation programme works so well, why doesn’t Toyota simulate and evaluate entire crash tests on computer? Because THUMS is meant to complement actual crash test dummies rather than replace them, with data and insights from the analysis of both “peoples” providing a fuller picture.
