March 7, 2023 • 50 mins
As automobiles took the world by storm, manufacturers quickly realized they needed to make a ton of safety improvements -- and fast. But how could you accurately determine what happened in a car crash, without risking human lives? In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max dive into the evolution of crash testing... along with the little-known dark side of crash test dummies.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. We're gonna do a little bit of
an automobile. Well, yeah, that was my my crash car
crash mouth sound. Did you like it? Yeah? I liked it? Also,
it was it was like a test of a car
(00:49):
crash maybe right perhaps? Yeah, I'm no dummy, and neither
are any of you. Ben Boland and then the super
producer Maximus to the maximum, at least not yet, our
super producer, mister Max Williams. Yes, still stuck around because
he has egregiously weird taste and friends. You are Noel,
(01:11):
I am Ben, And today we are talking about crash test.
We're talking about cars. It's it's nuts, man, cars are
nol I might be a little more into cars than
you are. But I love him, dude, and I know
you love him. You just took a road trip recently. Yeah,
I like driving him. They get me where I'm gone.
(01:33):
Oh anyway, so wait, we're not doing the whole episode
about that Walls. There was this kid wouldn't go to
school when Yeah, we're not doing that one. We're not
doing that one, but we I think we got past
our legal department with that impression, so we should be
(01:54):
good to go look up the band crash test Dummies epic.
They are referencing a thing that happens in the real world,
which is when auto manufacturers, for many years and in
the current day, when auto manufacturers are trying to full
(02:14):
proof their products, their cars, they build out human shaped mannequins, right,
and those are meant to provide invaluable, potentially life saving
data about what happens if something goes wrong, if a
(02:35):
car gets into crash. How does the airbag work? What
about the three point seat belt? How do we save lives?
That's what they're trying to ask. That's right. And weirdly, this,
these these things, these life saving creations spawned kind of
a weird pop cultural moment. Like in the nineties, action figures,
(02:56):
action figures or the head would pop up like rockham
sotock'em Robots had a cartoon show. There was I think
it was the cartoon came first and then the actions
figures were based around the cartoon like often as the case.
But yeah, they were designed. Their heads are they're bald
and they have these kind of like targety looking things
on their heads, and what an odd thing. I don't
think it really lasted very long. That's why I said moment.
(03:19):
But I had some of those figures and they were
placed sets he could get where you could like simulate
the crashes and all and they break apart. That's right.
I thought it was the coolest part. There was a
button their arms and legs. Yeah, yeah, so you could
test your crash as a child. But the thing is,
we have to understand that for a lot of people,
a lot of our fellow ridiculous historians in the United States,
(03:43):
the automobile in the post World War two era represented
an unprecedented amount of freedom, right, yeah, and I represented
a death trap of sorts. Before the advent of some
of these technological vancements at auto safety they were going
to talk about today. One, there was an active and
(04:06):
arguably continuing conspiracy on the part of automotive companies and
people who have money in them to make sure that
the American public was consumed with the benefits of that mobility.
And we're not thinking about the consequences of putting just
(04:26):
anyone behind the wheel if they got a little driver's license,
automobiles and this is per a great article in the Smithsonian.
Automobiles placed speed and power in the hands of individuals,
and as a result, during the dawn of the automobile.
And I say this as a guy who my first
show was all about cars. It was called car stuff.
(04:49):
Everything that floats, fly, swims or drives. Automobiles led to
a huge like an epidemic we could call it, of
traffic and injuries. And then to your point, Noel, people
started asking, well, what about the drivers. How do we
(05:09):
establish guidelines for the behavior of all these drivers? How
do we design better automobiles, How do we make better roads?
How do we get around traffic hazards? And this comes
to the world of safety measures. And when people started
talking about safety measures, well they started doing crash tests.
(05:32):
And we're not talking about the divisive film Crash with
James Spader, yeah, or the other devisive film Crash that
won all the Oscars and is now largely considered trash,
starring Matt Dillon and a bunch of others. Ben I
just was looking this up because the question popped into
my head when we're driver's licenses required, And it wasn't
(05:54):
until nineteen thirty four, and the Model T was invented
in like nine thirteen or no, nineteen o eight. That's
a big old gap. So there was a period where
it was like anybody could just hop into one of
these things and go to town literally or figuratively. Yeah
they didn't. I like that. I think you got poetic
(06:16):
at the end of the sentence. I like that because
you know, the technology, like any other emergent technology, was
not super common for a time. These things really were
called horseless carriages. Today, we're going to talk about how
auto manufacturers caught onto the idea of putting human shaped
(06:41):
things into their own vehicles and then wrecking those vehicles
to see what would happen. So here we go. It's
the dawn of the twentieth century, right, mass market automobiles
are a thing. Henry Ford is making a lot of money,
and he's definitely definitely supportive of the ideals that will
(07:07):
later launch the Nazi Party in Germany. Just to give
you a sense of the lay of the land. Yeah, cool, cool,
Those are like his two things, cars and anti semitism
and not safety. That was not his third thing. Well,
he's the type, dude, He's the type to be very opinionated,
and you couldn't nay say Henry Ford, these are two
(07:29):
true stories. He did one day say you can have
any version of my car you want, so long as
it is painted black. You can have any color car
you want, so long as it's painted black. And then
one time his own engineers built a prototype that improved
upon the Model T and he ripped it apart with
(07:52):
his bare hands in front of them. Super forward thinking fellow.
I mean, look, obviously he was a forward thinking fellow.
But sometimes folks like that can kind of get in
their own way or their forward thinking like once and
then they just can't see the forest for the trees
in terms of like other people's input, and history is
full of folks like that, and Henry Ford was definitely
(08:14):
one of them. Ben, I love your point about you
can only have you can have whatever kind of car
you want, as long as painted black. It really wasn't
until much later that choice in automobiles even became a
thing in terms of it being like a stylistic choice
like I want a red one, or I want this
or that or the other. That was a much later
kind of innovation. Actually, if I can jump in here,
real quick. We have an Ephederal episode about that. Somewhat
(08:38):
is our trash episode where it's people realize, oh, if
we sell things in multiple different colors and cars as well.
In the examples that our casts had and the reason
why it's like, okay, you sell them a different colors,
people will buy them more because it's seasonal maybe even right, oh,
this is the hot new one for this season, and
that means they become more disposable where you got to
(09:00):
get the newest and hottest one. And then they started
making little tweaks to designs that kind of encourage people
to want to keep up with the Joneses or Smiths
or whomever, whatever last name do please check out Ephemeral.
I think it's a it's a podcast that, in full transparency,
all of us have participated in. Max and his brother
Alex are some of the masterminds of that show, and
(09:22):
I think it's something we're all very very proud of
for good reason. By the way, and so anyway, here
we are automobiles. They're faster than horse drawn carriages. They're
faster than a bicycle. They're also, by the way, I
should say to the earlier point about Henry Ford, He
(09:42):
did not invent the automobile. He revolutionized the assembly line,
and that's he did so much other weird stuff. Check
out the car Stuff episode about Ford Landia. It's nuts.
It's like a three part series. Anyway, what I'm saying
is Max beat me here this guy. Yeah, I mean,
it's just true of a lot of folks of that stature,
(10:04):
like Elon Musk likes people to think that he invented
Tesla's but that is not the case. Nor did he
invent PayPal, nor did he invent Twitter. But he you know,
guys like that kind of write the history books to
a certain degree. So people associate Henry Ford with inventing
the automobile. And to your point, then that's just not true. Yeah, yeah,
(10:26):
you raise, It's just not the case, which is not
to take away from what he did for the automotive
culture in the United States. Thank god, that was one
of his two upset. That was the one of his
two obsessions that caught on. So all the people who
are watching these safety problems, they say, it really goes
(10:48):
down to our drivers. How competent are our drivers? Their
behavior determines whether an automobile is an efficient A to
B or to zed kind of thing or whether it
is a menace. And you know, look, these people were
not calling them dumb. These people were coming from a
(11:09):
world where one of the fastest ways to get around
on your own where you're driving would be a horse.
And if the horse doesn't like the vibe, the horse
is not going to keep going. The horse is like
a check and balance thing here. And if you don't
have that horse, you just have way for it horsepower.
(11:33):
I will take the womp womp on that max you
you shall have it to my friend. And horses also,
last I check don't drink alcohol for fun. So you know,
I mean, maybe there might be others. I'm just saying
people are fallible. People are inherently I mean not to
say the horses are like geniuses or anything, but they
(11:54):
kind of do the one thing and they kind of
do it well, you know what I mean. And by
a large they are teetotlers. So know what you're saying
is that they are a one trick pony, yeah, or
a one trick mayor or a one trick Philly, whichever
one you got. But again they do and you know,
horse technology hasn't really changed. You got your blinders that
(12:14):
just kind of make them go straight and not get distracted.
And with things like that you can kind of mitigate
the horse getting spooked and all of that and that
stuff short of like a bad tempered horse pretty predictable.
But people when given that power, oh that power, that
pedal to the metal, not as predictable. This is also
you know, there's a great point to be made about
(12:36):
how the horses did not necessarily consent to this. Hell no,
and they were not paid. The thing is there there's
this vast you could call it a conspiracy. We might
touch on it later. There's this vast movement amidst automobile
manufacturers to put the onus of safety and the consequences
(12:58):
of lack of safety all the individual drivers, not on
how the cars are designed. Automobile ownership becomes increasingly common
in the nineteen tens the nineteen twenties, and we begin
to see this emergent safety advocacy culture. You know, people
(13:23):
are saying, look, if you're driving a car, you're endangering yourself.
And I love that point about people who are driving
inebriated nol. You're also in endangering the rest of the community,
who is just probably walking around. There's the National Safety
Council that comes about. Then they're focusing on the human
(13:45):
factor in automobile accidents. You see the emergence of things
called safety leagues, and they do pr campaigns. No, i'd
like you hear cars for kids jingles these days about
donating your car. Yeah, they're not choice for to cars
for kids, stuff like that. Yeah, these campaigns took the
(14:07):
place of that, and they were attempting to make both
drivers and pedestrians people walking paying more attention in traffic.
The federal government is throwing money at state and local
governments to try to get everybody on the same the
same broad page about traffic laws, law enforcement. You know,
(14:31):
they were saying, look, if you drive one way in
Los Angeles, you should have relatively similar laws in New
York City. Right, And to your earlier point about emergent technology,
which is totally what this is moving at such a
fast pace. It's a pace that far exceeds the pace
of government. And it happens every time, you know, with
(14:51):
regulations like surrounding the Internet, for example, and all of
that always lags the government response. And we're literally talking
about a new technology that requires a vast infrastructure overhaul,
you know, of roads and bridges and all of these
things that did not necessarily need to be a certain way.
With just horses, you know, you could have these dirt
(15:12):
roads and all of that stuff, and you know, narrow
lanes and probably wouldn't end up with with massive numbers
of fatalities. But once cars get introduced, that stuff isn't
gonna fly anymore. Yes, it's not. It's gonna it's gonna drive.
So z z zip stops up. We actually like improv
(15:33):
here aspers. Oh sorry, my cat's knocking some stuff over.
Uh and is doctor excuse me, excuse me? Document? Yeah,
doctor Vakman also apparently a shareholder in some of these
places we're about to talk smack about. So keep it
all in nex So. You see things where manufacturers of
autos are attempting to put the blame on anybody but
(15:58):
themselves for little bit. And one of those is some
one instance of that is something Noel, you and I
talked about, which is the idea of jaywalking. I think
we mentioned this on stuff they don't want, you know,
I definitely did on a car stuff. But what is jaywalking? Noel?
H Well, I mean it's it's it's essentially crossing the
street illegally. That's what it's become. But it really more
(16:22):
referred to kind of just the culture of walking in general,
of pedestrians, and it was sort of like a term
of abuse. And the idea was to malign the humble
pedestrian in favor of getting them out of the way
of automobiles and moving more towards a highway and byway
(16:43):
based system of travel. Bro you nailed it, absolutely, one
hundred percent. Just so the idea there was to put
the blame on people who are, as you said, just walking.
And and Max, who is our research associate for today's episode,
(17:05):
Max came with the facts. Yeah, we're gonna do it
right now. Okay, aw Saxon Moose with the facts and Moose,
(17:27):
so Max found this this great comment, this great observation
that Americans, people in the United States, were slow to
understand the importance of redesigning the automobile itself. Stopped blaming
the victim, stopped blaming that pedestrian, try to make better cars.
(17:50):
And by the late nineteen twenties manufacturers finally admitted, oh,
maybe we could build a better car. And they they said, oh, okay,
let's make windshields that don't shatter as dangerously as quickly.
Let's maybe put brakes on all the wheels instead of
just like two, and you know, maybe we can build better,
(18:16):
better systems all around. And then they said, oh, also
we can sell it. We'll be selling the safer cars.
And they still do that to this day. You know,
stats like that about you know, rollover rates and whatever
what have you. And certain cars like Jeeps for example,
our land Rovers do kind of get a bad rap
(18:36):
for some of that safety stuff because they do roll
over more easily. But yeah, I mean, safety even now
is a big thing for family cars. You're dreaded Honda
Odyssey for example, very safe, you know, for those inside,
not necessarily for the enemies of Honda odyssees. I know what, Okay,
(18:57):
I'll play your Ranger games. Isn't that the car that
has been fine? I do not care for them. Yeah, okay,
do you don't have a Honda Hodyssey? Right? No you
do not. No, it's okay, you're you're good. Oh geez, sorry,
just my heart just jumped in my chest. I don't
know how much of that pause. We're kinda we're gonna
(19:18):
ed it out. But but yeah, yeah, as Noel knows well,
I feel the way about Honda odyssees that you feel
about birds. Yeah, I respect their right to exist. I
should say whatever far beyond I'm just laught. Birds aren't real, man,
and on Honda Odyssey's unfortunately, are very real, painfully real.
(19:42):
They'll find you. Yeah. Anyway, so far before the Honda Odyssey,
far before the Honda company gets into manufacturing troublesome mini vans,
we see that automakers wanted future customers to know that
their cars were safe, and they said, look, we're improving
(20:05):
roads where licensing drivers were regulating traffic. That's really what's
going to stop accidents from happening. We're putting in seat belts.
There's a guy named Neil's Bullet no relation. His last
name is spelled b O h l I N who
probably saved more than one billion lives with his Yeah,
(20:26):
with his seat belt innovation. So that's a great stat
have under your belt there yea belt. Also that you're
on fire today. So they added these things or they
knew they would be around, but for a lot of
the time these weren't in your typical mass market cars. Instead,
(20:48):
they decided they, being the auto manufacturers, they decided to
throw bodies at the problems. And they started their old bodies, right,
and they dead bodies for a while. Or I remembered
that from a past conversation and probably from that car
stuff episode. But I'm like, is that true? That is macaw?
(21:10):
But yeah, man, oh true, it gets you. You got it, man,
Let's let's let's get there. Let's take the long way,
you know, let's take the surface street rather than the interstate.
The first crash test were done on unoccupied vehicles. How
did that even work? Yeah, it seems like that would
(21:31):
favor the manufacturer more than the consumer maybe you know
what I mean, like making them more durable or something.
But actually they wouldn't want them to be more durable
with they they want people to buy new ones. But yeah,
I'm a little perplexed as to how they thought this
was a great idea and how they would measure success,
you know, in these tests. Yeah, and it kind of
build off that. I know. One of the safety features
(21:53):
they really marketed early on was all steel frames, because
like when like test like this and all still frame
got in an accident, it'd be like, oh, look there's
no damage there. But the problem with those was it
basically just like it was like putting humans into it
like a shaker, just shaking them up, and so like,
yeah to pure portnel, I don't I don't see how
(22:15):
this would do anything testing them. You just see, Oh
the car can survive that impact, but no idea on
how the people inside would do. Yeah, And they seem
to have realized that relatively quickly. Uh, and then they
pivoted right. Yeah. In their in their early days, auto
manufacturers would conduct crash testing by literally having some guy
(22:38):
sit in the driver's seat, shotgun the thing, and then
jump out of the moving car, you know, and do
a very cool, like evil knevil stunt. They roll away
right before it hit. Well, I hope when that that
method stopped being the thing that that person at least
got good work as a stunt driver in them into
movies quite possibly. And you know, that's a great story
(23:01):
for a future episode if we can find them. Let
us know. Ridiculous historians eventually though, they say, look, we
need a body in the car. We need the bodies
to hit the wall. So they started using in the
floor perhaps right. They used primates, they used bears, and yeah,
(23:23):
it's just it's it's it's horrible. I mean, these weren't alive,
were they? These Barren steambarns. It's like the worst Barren
Steam Bears book or bearn Stain Bears book. Ever, I
think the bears were alive. Man. They also used pigs.
How they wrangle them? Do they like sedate them or something?
I would imagine? So bears are pretty clever. Yeah, I'll
(23:45):
always be getting those picnic baskets, you know, um And
you know, to to that point, Ben primates pigs, bears
similar organ matrix, let's just say, layout to the human form. Yeah,
the thoracic and abdominal organ structure, and pigs especially similar
to humans. So while they were testing on these living creatures,
(24:09):
they said, all right, let's be honest, it's not bears
driving these cars. Not to be terrifying. Can you imagine bears,
cocaine bears perhaps driving around willy nilly and automobiles and
can you imagine one driving a Honda Odyssey. That's the
still I can't. Oh, I just spooked myself. I'm telling you,
(24:35):
who can leave this whole positive? I love it. It's
triggering for you that who hurt you Ben who I
think I've heard the story. It's been a long time.
But the Honda Odyssey. Yeah, they're out there even now.
One may be heading towards you. So the thing is
they realized quickly, Okay, using live mammals is all right,
(25:00):
but it's not getting us all the way there. We
need a better solution. So in the nineteen forties, the
history of crash test dummies begins. It comes from Uncle Sam,
it comes from the Air Force. They were testing these
mannequins in ejection seats. We do not know whether they
(25:23):
were shooting off bears in ejection seats first, but i'd
be a story. It'd be a story, good origin for
cocaine bear. The first dummy so far as we know,
was created by Sierra Engineering Company and Alderson Research Laboratories,
named after the founder, Sam Alderson, and they gave their
(25:47):
first dummy a name Sierra Sam. Ah Yes, yes, Sam,
sounds like a real cow poke. In nineteen sixty eight,
Alderson debuted that design in like a public kind of display,
right UM is specifically you know of automotive crash testing UM.
(26:07):
It was known as the the VIP, which does not
stand for a very important person in this case stands
for vehicular impact personnel. Now VIP was around as an
acronym and initialism by about nineteen thirty three. It wasn't
common until after World War Two, but just so everybody knows,
(26:30):
they were having a bit of a nod and a
wink there at the idea of VIP. Yeah, and now
we could there's another steel cage involved here, and this
is to simulate the human rib cage. They had a
steel rib cage articulated joints like you might see in
like a puppet, you know, um, like a even like
a stop motion puppet. Or they have those armatures, those
(26:51):
metal armatures that can be you know, flexed and all
of that stuff, uh, speaking of flexing, a flexible neck
and other cavities that were design trying to hold measurement tools. Yeah.
The idea was, according to the American Physical Society, that
one could mimic the acceleration and weight distribution of what
(27:13):
they considered to be an average male. They later expanded
and they said, well what about bigger people? You know,
what about people who have a larger height or a
little more weight to them. And then they said at
some point, oh, yeah, what about women very late in
the game. Women, what are those? Said the engineer, exactly exactly.
(27:40):
And up until the seventies, these crash test dummies were
built and designed by third party, non governmental companies, and
that all kind of took a turn when General Motors
decided that they wanted to internalize these processes because they
didn't think the folks that we're building these were doing
(28:00):
a good enough job, which is kind of cool because
they were taking it upon themselves too to make improvements
to these processes, presumably to increase their safety. But again,
safety also is now a selling point, so it's not
all benevolent here, you know, it's like they that becomes
(28:21):
a competitive edge if you have the safest car, because
this is in the era of like consumer reports and
you know a lot of that kind of stuff where
people are getting a little wiser to these sorts of things,
you know, and and insist on safety for their families
things like that. And by the way, a lot of
this is coming to us from the history of crash
test dummies over AAA by Andrew Sheldon, and this is
(28:45):
pretty recent. This came out about a year ago. Is
that would that be triple A that like the car club. Okay, yeah,
if everybody's typing it out though, three a's uh. The
second A leads you to the other problem we were
talking about earlier, which is alcoholism and cars. So the
Hybrid two comes out in nineteen seventy two, and this
(29:09):
is an improvement, right, It's the same thing, but a
little bit better, a little more nuanced understanding of human anatomy.
It also provides consistent crash results. Mainly, they want to
test seat belts. They want to figure out how we
can understand what happens to the head, the neck, the
(29:30):
limbs across all, you know, sort of human shapes. So
they're trying to be inclusive of different sizes, different genders,
different ages and so on. You know, obviously a six
foot three in eighty seven year old dude is not
going to react to the crash the same way that
(29:52):
I don't know a six year old girl would. Well,
and I think, you know, back to the crash test dummies.
Cartoon and action figures played into that because they were
like kid ones and like old lady, you know, they're
all the different ones, and that gave them their kind
of cast of characters. So that followed from this change
this diversification in the actual crash test dummies themselves for sure,
(30:15):
and GM has a third hybrid anniverse to creativity. They
call it the Hybrid three, and it has forty one
separate data channels. The Hybrid two, by way of contrast,
had about eight, so researchers could measure precise injuries to
(30:36):
different parts different week points in the human body. And
originally the Hybrid three was supposed to impersonate an average male.
In the eighties, they started including what they called large
males and small female dummies. Nineteen eighty four they introduce
(30:57):
child models, little tiny like Hawaii versions of crash test dummies.
But as we have been teasing for most of this episode,
eventually they decided to go past the imitations and stick
with some original bodies for testing. Like I said, I
(31:25):
kind of thought that maybe I had made that up
in my sick imagination, but not the case. They get
to a point where they're like, like you said, well,
nothing's really better than the real thing, kind of like
the way they made you like dissect fetle pigs and
cats in high school despite any misgivings. Actually, you could
probably have opted out of that. I bet if you
got a note or if it was like for religious
(31:47):
reasons perhaps, but maybe nowadays nowadays, but back then it
was you get chastised. The website Ethics Unwrapped, which is
a service from the University of Texas's Macombs School of Business,
actually has a case study on this, uh and it's
entitled Cadavers in Car Safety Research, And here's a little
(32:09):
little snippet. In nineteen ninety three was widely disclosed that
research engineers at Heidelberg University in Germany had used two
hundred adult and child cadavers in simulated car tests. The
researchers argued that the use of human cadavers was necessary
to study the actual effects of these crashes on the body.
They insisted that the research would save lives because it
would help engineers design safer cars. And as we know,
(32:33):
you know, Germans are known for their engineering prowess and
they're you know, manufacturing, and German cars are some of
the best out there. So I would argue they probably
were right. But it's a really bad pr look, isn't it.
I think? Was it? Was? It like a big kerfuffle
came out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was not a good look.
(32:55):
I mean, using cadavers in this way. It wasn't something
they made out out a whole cloth. It's not a
new thing, and it's still not gone completely since the
nineteen thirties, back when researchers at Wayne State University were
throwing bodies down elevator shafts. Every part of a car
(33:18):
touching on safety benefited in some way from testing with cadavers.
We see that Ford, for instance, everybody knows Ford, and
they are good cars. Look, I dunked on Henry Ford.
I have dunked on Henry Ford for many years. I
drive a Ford Escape right now and it's a pretty
(33:40):
good car. Well, I got a good deal whatever, fair enough,
fair enough. So this company was promoting what they called
their inflatable rear seat belts in the twenty eleven Explorer,
and the Explorer for anybody playing along at home, is
nicer than the Escape. I'm that cheap. So Ford says,
(34:03):
this gives you five times the protection of the conventional
seat belt. But if you look at their promo and
their pr and stuff, you'll see that they don't really
like to publicize the fact that dead bodies were used
in the development of that seat belt. Yeah, no, it's
(34:26):
it's definitely not something you come right out and at advertise.
But here here's the perspective from pre Prasade as a
former chief safety researcher at Ford on this very subject, saying,
it's still very important. Even though we have very good
math modeling of dummies, human modeling hasn't reached that state yet,
meaning there's still not the modeling is still inferior to
(34:50):
using the cadavers. Yeah, there's not a way yet to
run moulation. I get that, that makes sense. So now,
of course this is something that publicly, at the very
least automakers kind of want to stay away from because
it is such a pr nightmare. A Swedish researcher in
two thousand and eight told the Express in newspaper that
(35:13):
General Motors and Saab we're using cadavers in research, and
the companies denied it. Yeah, and it seems like they're
legit there because they don't have the resources, the infrastructure
that you would need to conduct a successful crash test
with a cadaver. But you know who does a lot
(35:34):
of your favorite universities, the old NHTSA, the National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration. Right now, as you are hearing this
if you listen. In the United States, they are funding
multiple cadaver test per year and some of those schools
(35:54):
also get funding from automakers. Yeah, and this kind of
makes me think of like the red market kind of
stuff that we've talked about, and stuff they don't want
you to know, our body brokers, you know, and all
of that. That's much more of us stuff they don't
want you to know. Topic that we've covered in various iterations.
But it's like, who are these bodies? Right? Unclaimed John
(36:18):
or Jane? Does is just the term it's used for,
you know, unidentified bodies that are found? Is that is
that right? Or people that are maybe donated their bodies
to science. People who donate their bodies to science and
don't have a clear understanding of how that body would
be used. You might think it's being used in cancer
research or something like that, not knowing that it is
(36:42):
just stuffed into a Honda Odyssey and driven into wall. Oh.
The humanity, the humanity of it all gotta feel not
great by the way, too, for whoever has to clean
these experiments up? True, and also we have to ask,
is there a greater good argument if you are if
(37:05):
you are donating your body to science and your body
provides data that helps build a better car that helps
save other people's lives, is that not a noble thing?
I mean. A spokesman for Ford, a guy named West Shorewood,
said that most companies are moving toward digital modeling if
(37:27):
they can, because it's way way more cost effective to
do a bunch of computer simulations than it is to
do one test with a human corpse. Yeah, and I
think a lot of the people that maybe have objections, Well,
first of all, there is the we talked about this
on the Stuff That I Want you to Know episodes.
You can't tick a box and say I want my
(37:48):
body used for this, but not this, this, but not that,
you know, So there should be a bit of a
eyes wide open thing when you're deciding to do that
in the first place, because you can't pick and choose,
so it's kind of fair game. And really, in this situation,
nothing truly nefarious is happening, right, It's it's it's not
(38:08):
like they're getting these illegally or they're, you know, right,
something nasty behind the scenes. But I think the people
that object to stuff like this is probably on religious
grounds where It's like this is in some way, you know, unclean,
you know, to use the human vessel, the human temple
in these ways. I mean, what's next, Let's be as
(38:31):
cold as these folks. What's next? Do you check the
box about where your body goes? And then you check
the car you want to be tested in? Like I'm
okay with being used. It would my body be used
in crash test, but it can only be in the
newest Maserati, Right, yeah, yeah, exactly, these hips shall no
(38:53):
Honda Odyssey touch right right? Still put me still, put
me in anything other than a Porsche, etc. There's good
news though. Albert King, who is a professor at Wayne State,
has been working in cadaver research since nineteen sixty six
and said the school had fallen off with their testing
(39:15):
in recent years. They used to do like one cadaver
a month, and at the time of his interview is
saying they do no more than maybe a handful every year.
And this comes to us from something published in nineteen
ninety five, so several decades of past. But I said,
there are benefits of this work, and he's on record
(39:38):
in the Journal of Trauma for this, and he said
the safe the journal. Look, yeah, if you're if you're
hanging out one afternoon and you're like, my day is
going too well, check out the Journal of Trauma. They're
doing important work. It's just kind of a downer. And
and Professor King estimates that the safety improvements may by
(40:00):
these tests up to nineteen eighty seven saved at minimum
eight thousand, five hundred lives a year. So that's as
many as the guy that invented the seatbelt. No, no,
not as many as Neil's bowl, and no relation, I wish,
but but it looks like that there is a decline
in using bodies to test auto accidents, as we can
(40:25):
see in how Cadaver's made your Car Safer from Wired.
There's not too much to be done now improving safety
inside of a car. No, you remember those like you
see them all the time, and movies from the forties
and the sixties, those uh steering wheels that had like
the head of a torpedo in the middle, just facing
(40:48):
right for impaling the whole face. You know, that's stuff's done.
That's stuff's done. Airbag tech is pretty good, you know
what I mean. That will save your life. And again
you can't really do much with the design of what
a car is. A car is what a car is.
But we've gone far enough along in the in the
evolution of this technology that there's certain things that just
(41:11):
you hit a ceiling, and it's a good ceiling. In
this case, it's a safety ceiling that even the cheapest
of cars, you know, are going to be relatively safe
to occupy. And the next logical step is going to
be addressing human error on the side of the driver.
And that's still yeah the damas yeah, yeah, who are
(41:34):
you excited? I don't know, man. And again, you know
you've talked about this on car stuff too, where like
a big part of a reticence from some about autonomous
vehicles is less about yeah, sure, the safety of it's great,
but also like it kind of eliminates car culture in
a certain sense because people like cars because they go
room room and then they allow you. But then I
(41:54):
think will happen is that will become more of a
niche kind of interest and you'll still be able to
drive them on tracks. But I get I'm sorry, I'm
getting ahead of myself. There could become a future where
it is illegal for you to drive yourself on a
public roadway. Yeah, yeah, it's it's quite possible. And then
you go to the greater good argument. But this this
(42:16):
is a story for a future episode of Ridiculous History.
Right now, we just want you to know. One, crash
Test dummies definitely a thing. Two. A lot of those
were dead bodies of actual human beings and rugged up
bears or drugged up bears, but not cocaine drugged up bears.
I feel like a bear on a lot of cocaine.
(42:38):
I've never tried cocaine. I don't endorse it, but I
feel like I feel like a bear out a really
active drug would probably bad news because steer the car
a little bit, you know, it'd be a bad news
just from flailing around. They would. Yeah, absolutely, Now, not
not a good not a good situation there. And we're
gonna get in a little bit more tangents and trivia
(43:01):
kind of stuff. But I did want to point out, um,
the Crash Test Dummies cartoon. It was like a special
It was just a one time aired thing and it
wasn't like cell animation. It was really bad nineties CGI
kind of like it wasn't all serious. It was the
action figures were the action figures and then there was
(43:21):
a series based on the action figure. So I had
said I thought it was maybe the other way around,
which is often the case like with he Man and
Ninja Turtles and all that. But some of the book
comic book. But then there was the cartoon. And then
because of the cartoon or the action figures in the
cartoon were kind of hand in hand. But the characters
names were Vincent Larry who were the main guy. As
their vehicles, they all came with a vehicle crash car
(43:44):
with Dash. I guess Dash is like a little guy.
Maybe Larry had the student driver car with Axel that
was their passenger. Then you have Darryl who drove the
crash cycle. Did they have a dog? Did they have
an animal? I bet you Dash was made the animal. Okay,
I'm guessing, but I don't know for a fact. I'm
just looking at this list. And then we had spare Tire,
(44:06):
which I'm guessing it was a fat joke because he
seemed a y. It also drove a crash shopper, which
is sort of like a biker gang kind of thing
where you picture like maybe you know, a spare tire
is a slang for like a belly, and then you
had Skid the kid who drove an ATV, which I
(44:26):
thought was fun. And then you had a pair hubcap
and bumper who had a crash lawnmower. Oh yeah, well
you get in situations. Yeah, us, I've got to stop
saying you get in situations. Yeah, man, it applies, all right, whatever,
But we are going to return next week with some
(44:48):
uh with some deep dives into the history of turn signals,
and we hope you joined us for that in the
In the meantime, maybe nol to the point about tangents
in trivia. We take a second to shout out some
horrific highway safety films. If you're having too good of
an afternoon, you've read the Journal of Trauma and you
(45:09):
think I'm still feeling too nice, maybe you should check
out these films. That's right. One of the most infamous
of these was one called Signal thirty, which is funny
because I didn't know this, but there was a band
in my hometown. There was a kind of a punk
scene there, and they were this punk band called Signal thirty,
and that was the name of a traffic safety scared
(45:33):
straight kind of video. They used real accident footage to
show the results like Faces of Death style. But also
there was a weird pro car bent to this there.
It was almost like propaganda where it put the onus
of blame on the drivers and not the automobiles. And
(45:55):
this was the time where some of these cars still
maybe left something to be desired in terms of safety, right, yeah,
one hundred percent. I also want to shout out I
want to shout out two things that our show is
very biased about. The first is an excellent documentary called
Hell's Highway, The True Story of Highway Safety Films by
our pal Brett Wood, who has also made a number
(46:18):
of early fiction shows with us before before our parent
company really got into it. So check out Brett Wood's work.
And also, while you're there, you'll want to check out Max.
I hope I don't make this awkward for you. You'll
want to check out Ephemeral's excellent work on these highway
(46:40):
safety films. Max. As we wrap up today, could you
talk a little bit about that to give people a
heads up. Yeah. So, there was this weird phenomenon that
happened because of so many kids in the fifties being
subjected to these awful films like single thirty or like
these things. If you look at them, you watch them,
they're basically like their horror film The Faces of Death,
(47:01):
when that was a thing where you'd see like suicide
being an anthology of clips of real deaths. Yeah, so
they were very very not for children to call the
video nasties sometimes. Yeah, that was a fun, weird term
that was used to describe some of these types of
snuff adjacent films, you know. Yeah, So we went down
(47:25):
this rabbit hole a couple of years ago and we
talked to doctor Bernice Murphy who is an author and
a professor, and she wrote the book The Highway Horror Film,
which is just talking about like all these films come out,
like some of the films like Psycho is often attributed
to this, like this genre of film. But how so
it's a motor hotel that people stop. It's a road movie. Yeah,
(47:47):
I got you, Okay, interesting, I didn't think about so
like in the film, maybe there would be someone that
was like on a road trip and then the horrific
event happened. There's there's a couple, I believe there's four
different types that she outlines, and one of the types
is like you're now in the middle of nowhere, but
these areas that you weren't able to access before, but
(48:07):
now because the cars, you're able to access these areas
and stuff. Hell, Texas Jamesaw Massacre kind of falls under
that exactly banner. Yeah, the Dark Side of the Great
American Road Trip for surely did not think about that.
That's super interesting and that's one of your favorites, I know,
And and that's where we're going to because you know,
this whole episode that we have doctor Bernice Murphy on
(48:29):
is about ridiculous history hero her Carvey, who did a
number of highway safety films, especially a lot of drunk
driving films at Centro On Films where he worked for
thirty something the years, but he also did Carnival Souls.
The funny thing is Carnival Souls is really, if you
think about it, a highway safety film because the kids
being reckless driving and they drive their car off the thing,
(48:51):
and I think Skip Elzheimer, who's our other our other
guests on that episode, he outlines at the very end
by saying, uh, drive, I've step kids, or your soul
will be tortured as you slowly descent to Hell. Or
something along those lines, which is basically the plot of
Carnival Souls. If you haven't seen Carnival Souls, watched it
and get ready for all the organ. Yes, there's a
(49:14):
lot of organ uh ed, there's a lot more to
discuss in the history of the automobile. Now, Noel, you,
Max and I are going to call it a day
with a great thank you, I think to to our
research associate and superproducer Max, as well as to Alex Williams,
(49:34):
who can posed this slapping Bob else we think indeed,
oh man, yeah, slapping away over there. Um. We'd also
like to thank christophrastiotis here in spirit. Eve's Jeff Coats
our boy, Alex Williams, you already said that, but I
just want to say it twice. So nice, he sayd twy.
Jonathan's chicklet. We're gonna see him in person really soon.
(49:56):
We're going to south By Southwest. Yeah, he's gonna be there.
He's gonna be there. M all right, we'll see how
it goes. Um. But yeah, thanks to you, Ben for
we were kind of our own Larry and Jerry what
were their names? H Vincent Larry doing crash test references
yeah that was it. Yeah, I mean I watched it though, no,
(50:17):
you daled it. This is awesome. Tune in. Tune in soon, everybody.
We are going to debate turn signals and I'll probably
talk trash about BMW's We'll see you next time, folks.
(50:38):
For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. We're gonna do a little bit of
an automobile. Well, yeah, that was my my crash car
crash mouth sound. Did you like it? Yeah? I liked it? Also,
it was it was like a test of a car
(00:49):
crash maybe right perhaps? Yeah, I'm no dummy, and neither
are any of you. Ben Boland and then the super
producer Maximus to the maximum, at least not yet, our
super producer, mister Max Williams. Yes, still stuck around because
he has egregiously weird taste and friends. You are Noel,
(01:11):
I am Ben, And today we are talking about crash test.
We're talking about cars. It's it's nuts, man, cars are
nol I might be a little more into cars than
you are. But I love him, dude, and I know
you love him. You just took a road trip recently. Yeah,
I like driving him. They get me where I'm gone.
(01:33):
Oh anyway, so wait, we're not doing the whole episode
about that Walls. There was this kid wouldn't go to
school when Yeah, we're not doing that one. We're not
doing that one, but we I think we got past
our legal department with that impression, so we should be
(01:54):
good to go look up the band crash test Dummies epic.
They are referencing a thing that happens in the real world,
which is when auto manufacturers, for many years and in
the current day, when auto manufacturers are trying to full
(02:14):
proof their products, their cars, they build out human shaped mannequins, right,
and those are meant to provide invaluable, potentially life saving
data about what happens if something goes wrong, if a
(02:35):
car gets into crash. How does the airbag work? What
about the three point seat belt? How do we save lives?
That's what they're trying to ask. That's right. And weirdly, this,
these these things, these life saving creations spawned kind of
a weird pop cultural moment. Like in the nineties, action figures,
(02:56):
action figures or the head would pop up like rockham
sotock'em Robots had a cartoon show. There was I think
it was the cartoon came first and then the actions
figures were based around the cartoon like often as the case.
But yeah, they were designed. Their heads are they're bald
and they have these kind of like targety looking things
on their heads, and what an odd thing. I don't
think it really lasted very long. That's why I said moment.
(03:19):
But I had some of those figures and they were
placed sets he could get where you could like simulate
the crashes and all and they break apart. That's right.
I thought it was the coolest part. There was a
button their arms and legs. Yeah, yeah, so you could
test your crash as a child. But the thing is,
we have to understand that for a lot of people,
a lot of our fellow ridiculous historians in the United States,
(03:43):
the automobile in the post World War two era represented
an unprecedented amount of freedom, right, yeah, and I represented
a death trap of sorts. Before the advent of some
of these technological vancements at auto safety they were going
to talk about today. One, there was an active and
(04:06):
arguably continuing conspiracy on the part of automotive companies and
people who have money in them to make sure that
the American public was consumed with the benefits of that mobility.
And we're not thinking about the consequences of putting just
(04:26):
anyone behind the wheel if they got a little driver's license,
automobiles and this is per a great article in the Smithsonian.
Automobiles placed speed and power in the hands of individuals,
and as a result, during the dawn of the automobile.
And I say this as a guy who my first
show was all about cars. It was called car stuff.
(04:49):
Everything that floats, fly, swims or drives. Automobiles led to
a huge like an epidemic we could call it, of
traffic and injuries. And then to your point, Noel, people
started asking, well, what about the drivers. How do we
(05:09):
establish guidelines for the behavior of all these drivers? How
do we design better automobiles, How do we make better roads?
How do we get around traffic hazards? And this comes
to the world of safety measures. And when people started
talking about safety measures, well they started doing crash tests.
(05:32):
And we're not talking about the divisive film Crash with
James Spader, yeah, or the other devisive film Crash that
won all the Oscars and is now largely considered trash,
starring Matt Dillon and a bunch of others. Ben I
just was looking this up because the question popped into
my head when we're driver's licenses required, And it wasn't
(05:54):
until nineteen thirty four, and the Model T was invented
in like nine thirteen or no, nineteen o eight. That's
a big old gap. So there was a period where
it was like anybody could just hop into one of
these things and go to town literally or figuratively. Yeah
they didn't. I like that. I think you got poetic
(06:16):
at the end of the sentence. I like that because
you know, the technology, like any other emergent technology, was
not super common for a time. These things really were
called horseless carriages. Today, we're going to talk about how
auto manufacturers caught onto the idea of putting human shaped
(06:41):
things into their own vehicles and then wrecking those vehicles
to see what would happen. So here we go. It's
the dawn of the twentieth century, right, mass market automobiles
are a thing. Henry Ford is making a lot of money,
and he's definitely definitely supportive of the ideals that will
(07:07):
later launch the Nazi Party in Germany. Just to give
you a sense of the lay of the land. Yeah, cool, cool,
Those are like his two things, cars and anti semitism
and not safety. That was not his third thing. Well,
he's the type, dude, He's the type to be very opinionated,
and you couldn't nay say Henry Ford, these are two
(07:29):
true stories. He did one day say you can have
any version of my car you want, so long as
it is painted black. You can have any color car
you want, so long as it's painted black. And then
one time his own engineers built a prototype that improved
upon the Model T and he ripped it apart with
(07:52):
his bare hands in front of them. Super forward thinking fellow.
I mean, look, obviously he was a forward thinking fellow.
But sometimes folks like that can kind of get in
their own way or their forward thinking like once and
then they just can't see the forest for the trees
in terms of like other people's input, and history is
full of folks like that, and Henry Ford was definitely
(08:14):
one of them. Ben, I love your point about you
can only have you can have whatever kind of car
you want, as long as painted black. It really wasn't
until much later that choice in automobiles even became a
thing in terms of it being like a stylistic choice
like I want a red one, or I want this
or that or the other. That was a much later
kind of innovation. Actually, if I can jump in here,
real quick. We have an Ephederal episode about that. Somewhat
(08:38):
is our trash episode where it's people realize, oh, if
we sell things in multiple different colors and cars as well.
In the examples that our casts had and the reason
why it's like, okay, you sell them a different colors,
people will buy them more because it's seasonal maybe even right, oh,
this is the hot new one for this season, and
that means they become more disposable where you got to
(09:00):
get the newest and hottest one. And then they started
making little tweaks to designs that kind of encourage people
to want to keep up with the Joneses or Smiths
or whomever, whatever last name do please check out Ephemeral.
I think it's a it's a podcast that, in full transparency,
all of us have participated in. Max and his brother
Alex are some of the masterminds of that show, and
(09:22):
I think it's something we're all very very proud of
for good reason. By the way, and so anyway, here
we are automobiles. They're faster than horse drawn carriages. They're
faster than a bicycle. They're also, by the way, I
should say to the earlier point about Henry Ford, He
(09:42):
did not invent the automobile. He revolutionized the assembly line,
and that's he did so much other weird stuff. Check
out the car Stuff episode about Ford Landia. It's nuts.
It's like a three part series. Anyway, what I'm saying
is Max beat me here this guy. Yeah, I mean,
it's just true of a lot of folks of that stature,
(10:04):
like Elon Musk likes people to think that he invented
Tesla's but that is not the case. Nor did he
invent PayPal, nor did he invent Twitter. But he you know,
guys like that kind of write the history books to
a certain degree. So people associate Henry Ford with inventing
the automobile. And to your point, then that's just not true. Yeah, yeah,
(10:26):
you raise, It's just not the case, which is not
to take away from what he did for the automotive
culture in the United States. Thank god, that was one
of his two upset. That was the one of his
two obsessions that caught on. So all the people who
are watching these safety problems, they say, it really goes
(10:48):
down to our drivers. How competent are our drivers? Their
behavior determines whether an automobile is an efficient A to
B or to zed kind of thing or whether it
is a menace. And you know, look, these people were
not calling them dumb. These people were coming from a
(11:09):
world where one of the fastest ways to get around
on your own where you're driving would be a horse.
And if the horse doesn't like the vibe, the horse
is not going to keep going. The horse is like
a check and balance thing here. And if you don't
have that horse, you just have way for it horsepower.
(11:33):
I will take the womp womp on that max you
you shall have it to my friend. And horses also,
last I check don't drink alcohol for fun. So you know,
I mean, maybe there might be others. I'm just saying
people are fallible. People are inherently I mean not to
say the horses are like geniuses or anything, but they
(11:54):
kind of do the one thing and they kind of
do it well, you know what I mean. And by
a large they are teetotlers. So know what you're saying
is that they are a one trick pony, yeah, or
a one trick mayor or a one trick Philly, whichever
one you got. But again they do and you know,
horse technology hasn't really changed. You got your blinders that
(12:14):
just kind of make them go straight and not get distracted.
And with things like that you can kind of mitigate
the horse getting spooked and all of that and that
stuff short of like a bad tempered horse pretty predictable.
But people when given that power, oh that power, that
pedal to the metal, not as predictable. This is also
you know, there's a great point to be made about
(12:36):
how the horses did not necessarily consent to this. Hell no,
and they were not paid. The thing is there there's
this vast you could call it a conspiracy. We might
touch on it later. There's this vast movement amidst automobile
manufacturers to put the onus of safety and the consequences
(12:58):
of lack of safety all the individual drivers, not on
how the cars are designed. Automobile ownership becomes increasingly common
in the nineteen tens the nineteen twenties, and we begin
to see this emergent safety advocacy culture. You know, people
(13:23):
are saying, look, if you're driving a car, you're endangering yourself.
And I love that point about people who are driving
inebriated nol. You're also in endangering the rest of the community,
who is just probably walking around. There's the National Safety
Council that comes about. Then they're focusing on the human
(13:45):
factor in automobile accidents. You see the emergence of things
called safety leagues, and they do pr campaigns. No, i'd
like you hear cars for kids jingles these days about
donating your car. Yeah, they're not choice for to cars
for kids, stuff like that. Yeah, these campaigns took the
(14:07):
place of that, and they were attempting to make both
drivers and pedestrians people walking paying more attention in traffic.
The federal government is throwing money at state and local
governments to try to get everybody on the same the
same broad page about traffic laws, law enforcement. You know,
(14:31):
they were saying, look, if you drive one way in
Los Angeles, you should have relatively similar laws in New
York City. Right, And to your earlier point about emergent technology,
which is totally what this is moving at such a
fast pace. It's a pace that far exceeds the pace
of government. And it happens every time, you know, with
(14:51):
regulations like surrounding the Internet, for example, and all of
that always lags the government response. And we're literally talking
about a new technology that requires a vast infrastructure overhaul,
you know, of roads and bridges and all of these
things that did not necessarily need to be a certain way.
With just horses, you know, you could have these dirt
(15:12):
roads and all of that stuff, and you know, narrow
lanes and probably wouldn't end up with with massive numbers
of fatalities. But once cars get introduced, that stuff isn't
gonna fly anymore. Yes, it's not. It's gonna it's gonna drive.
So z z zip stops up. We actually like improv
(15:33):
here aspers. Oh sorry, my cat's knocking some stuff over.
Uh and is doctor excuse me, excuse me? Document? Yeah,
doctor Vakman also apparently a shareholder in some of these
places we're about to talk smack about. So keep it
all in nex So. You see things where manufacturers of
autos are attempting to put the blame on anybody but
(15:58):
themselves for little bit. And one of those is some
one instance of that is something Noel, you and I
talked about, which is the idea of jaywalking. I think
we mentioned this on stuff they don't want, you know,
I definitely did on a car stuff. But what is jaywalking? Noel?
H Well, I mean it's it's it's essentially crossing the
street illegally. That's what it's become. But it really more
(16:22):
referred to kind of just the culture of walking in general,
of pedestrians, and it was sort of like a term
of abuse. And the idea was to malign the humble
pedestrian in favor of getting them out of the way
of automobiles and moving more towards a highway and byway
(16:43):
based system of travel. Bro you nailed it, absolutely, one
hundred percent. Just so the idea there was to put
the blame on people who are, as you said, just walking.
And and Max, who is our research associate for today's episode,
(17:05):
Max came with the facts. Yeah, we're gonna do it
right now. Okay, aw Saxon Moose with the facts and Moose,
(17:27):
so Max found this this great comment, this great observation
that Americans, people in the United States, were slow to
understand the importance of redesigning the automobile itself. Stopped blaming
the victim, stopped blaming that pedestrian, try to make better cars.
(17:50):
And by the late nineteen twenties manufacturers finally admitted, oh,
maybe we could build a better car. And they they said, oh, okay,
let's make windshields that don't shatter as dangerously as quickly.
Let's maybe put brakes on all the wheels instead of
just like two, and you know, maybe we can build better,
(18:16):
better systems all around. And then they said, oh, also
we can sell it. We'll be selling the safer cars.
And they still do that to this day. You know,
stats like that about you know, rollover rates and whatever
what have you. And certain cars like Jeeps for example,
our land Rovers do kind of get a bad rap
(18:36):
for some of that safety stuff because they do roll
over more easily. But yeah, I mean, safety even now
is a big thing for family cars. You're dreaded Honda
Odyssey for example, very safe, you know, for those inside,
not necessarily for the enemies of Honda odyssees. I know what, Okay,
(18:57):
I'll play your Ranger games. Isn't that the car that
has been fine? I do not care for them. Yeah, okay,
do you don't have a Honda Hodyssey? Right? No you
do not. No, it's okay, you're you're good. Oh geez, sorry,
just my heart just jumped in my chest. I don't
know how much of that pause. We're kinda we're gonna
(19:18):
ed it out. But but yeah, yeah, as Noel knows well,
I feel the way about Honda odyssees that you feel
about birds. Yeah, I respect their right to exist. I
should say whatever far beyond I'm just laught. Birds aren't real, man,
and on Honda Odyssey's unfortunately, are very real, painfully real.
(19:42):
They'll find you. Yeah. Anyway, so far before the Honda Odyssey,
far before the Honda company gets into manufacturing troublesome mini vans,
we see that automakers wanted future customers to know that
their cars were safe, and they said, look, we're improving
(20:05):
roads where licensing drivers were regulating traffic. That's really what's
going to stop accidents from happening. We're putting in seat belts.
There's a guy named Neil's Bullet no relation. His last
name is spelled b O h l I N who
probably saved more than one billion lives with his Yeah,
(20:26):
with his seat belt innovation. So that's a great stat
have under your belt there yea belt. Also that you're
on fire today. So they added these things or they
knew they would be around, but for a lot of
the time these weren't in your typical mass market cars. Instead,
(20:48):
they decided they, being the auto manufacturers, they decided to
throw bodies at the problems. And they started their old bodies, right,
and they dead bodies for a while. Or I remembered
that from a past conversation and probably from that car
stuff episode. But I'm like, is that true? That is macaw?
(21:10):
But yeah, man, oh true, it gets you. You got it, man,
Let's let's let's get there. Let's take the long way,
you know, let's take the surface street rather than the interstate.
The first crash test were done on unoccupied vehicles. How
did that even work? Yeah, it seems like that would
(21:31):
favor the manufacturer more than the consumer maybe you know
what I mean, like making them more durable or something.
But actually they wouldn't want them to be more durable
with they they want people to buy new ones. But yeah,
I'm a little perplexed as to how they thought this
was a great idea and how they would measure success,
you know, in these tests. Yeah, and it kind of
build off that. I know. One of the safety features
(21:53):
they really marketed early on was all steel frames, because
like when like test like this and all still frame
got in an accident, it'd be like, oh, look there's
no damage there. But the problem with those was it
basically just like it was like putting humans into it
like a shaker, just shaking them up, and so like,
yeah to pure portnel, I don't I don't see how
(22:15):
this would do anything testing them. You just see, Oh
the car can survive that impact, but no idea on
how the people inside would do. Yeah, And they seem
to have realized that relatively quickly. Uh, and then they
pivoted right. Yeah. In their in their early days, auto
manufacturers would conduct crash testing by literally having some guy
(22:38):
sit in the driver's seat, shotgun the thing, and then
jump out of the moving car, you know, and do
a very cool, like evil knevil stunt. They roll away
right before it hit. Well, I hope when that that
method stopped being the thing that that person at least
got good work as a stunt driver in them into
movies quite possibly. And you know, that's a great story
(23:01):
for a future episode if we can find them. Let
us know. Ridiculous historians eventually though, they say, look, we
need a body in the car. We need the bodies
to hit the wall. So they started using in the
floor perhaps right. They used primates, they used bears, and yeah,
(23:23):
it's just it's it's it's horrible. I mean, these weren't alive,
were they? These Barren steambarns. It's like the worst Barren
Steam Bears book or bearn Stain Bears book. Ever, I
think the bears were alive. Man. They also used pigs.
How they wrangle them? Do they like sedate them or something?
I would imagine? So bears are pretty clever. Yeah, I'll
(23:45):
always be getting those picnic baskets, you know, um And
you know, to to that point, Ben primates pigs, bears
similar organ matrix, let's just say, layout to the human form. Yeah,
the thoracic and abdominal organ structure, and pigs especially similar
to humans. So while they were testing on these living creatures,
(24:09):
they said, all right, let's be honest, it's not bears
driving these cars. Not to be terrifying. Can you imagine bears,
cocaine bears perhaps driving around willy nilly and automobiles and
can you imagine one driving a Honda Odyssey. That's the
still I can't. Oh, I just spooked myself. I'm telling you,
(24:35):
who can leave this whole positive? I love it. It's
triggering for you that who hurt you Ben who I
think I've heard the story. It's been a long time.
But the Honda Odyssey. Yeah, they're out there even now.
One may be heading towards you. So the thing is
they realized quickly, Okay, using live mammals is all right,
(25:00):
but it's not getting us all the way there. We
need a better solution. So in the nineteen forties, the
history of crash test dummies begins. It comes from Uncle Sam,
it comes from the Air Force. They were testing these
mannequins in ejection seats. We do not know whether they
(25:23):
were shooting off bears in ejection seats first, but i'd
be a story. It'd be a story, good origin for
cocaine bear. The first dummy so far as we know,
was created by Sierra Engineering Company and Alderson Research Laboratories,
named after the founder, Sam Alderson, and they gave their
(25:47):
first dummy a name Sierra Sam. Ah Yes, yes, Sam,
sounds like a real cow poke. In nineteen sixty eight,
Alderson debuted that design in like a public kind of display,
right UM is specifically you know of automotive crash testing UM.
(26:07):
It was known as the the VIP, which does not
stand for a very important person in this case stands
for vehicular impact personnel. Now VIP was around as an
acronym and initialism by about nineteen thirty three. It wasn't
common until after World War Two, but just so everybody knows,
(26:30):
they were having a bit of a nod and a
wink there at the idea of VIP. Yeah, and now
we could there's another steel cage involved here, and this
is to simulate the human rib cage. They had a
steel rib cage articulated joints like you might see in
like a puppet, you know, um, like a even like
a stop motion puppet. Or they have those armatures, those
(26:51):
metal armatures that can be you know, flexed and all
of that stuff, uh, speaking of flexing, a flexible neck
and other cavities that were design trying to hold measurement tools. Yeah.
The idea was, according to the American Physical Society, that
one could mimic the acceleration and weight distribution of what
(27:13):
they considered to be an average male. They later expanded
and they said, well what about bigger people? You know,
what about people who have a larger height or a
little more weight to them. And then they said at
some point, oh, yeah, what about women very late in
the game. Women, what are those? Said the engineer, exactly exactly.
(27:40):
And up until the seventies, these crash test dummies were
built and designed by third party, non governmental companies, and
that all kind of took a turn when General Motors
decided that they wanted to internalize these processes because they
didn't think the folks that we're building these were doing
(28:00):
a good enough job, which is kind of cool because
they were taking it upon themselves too to make improvements
to these processes, presumably to increase their safety. But again,
safety also is now a selling point, so it's not
all benevolent here, you know, it's like they that becomes
(28:21):
a competitive edge if you have the safest car, because
this is in the era of like consumer reports and
you know a lot of that kind of stuff where
people are getting a little wiser to these sorts of things,
you know, and and insist on safety for their families
things like that. And by the way, a lot of
this is coming to us from the history of crash
test dummies over AAA by Andrew Sheldon, and this is
(28:45):
pretty recent. This came out about a year ago. Is
that would that be triple A that like the car club. Okay, yeah,
if everybody's typing it out though, three a's uh. The
second A leads you to the other problem we were
talking about earlier, which is alcoholism and cars. So the
Hybrid two comes out in nineteen seventy two, and this
(29:09):
is an improvement, right, It's the same thing, but a
little bit better, a little more nuanced understanding of human anatomy.
It also provides consistent crash results. Mainly, they want to
test seat belts. They want to figure out how we
can understand what happens to the head, the neck, the
(29:30):
limbs across all, you know, sort of human shapes. So
they're trying to be inclusive of different sizes, different genders,
different ages and so on. You know, obviously a six
foot three in eighty seven year old dude is not
going to react to the crash the same way that
(29:52):
I don't know a six year old girl would. Well,
and I think, you know, back to the crash test dummies.
Cartoon and action figures played into that because they were
like kid ones and like old lady, you know, they're
all the different ones, and that gave them their kind
of cast of characters. So that followed from this change
this diversification in the actual crash test dummies themselves for sure,
(30:15):
and GM has a third hybrid anniverse to creativity. They
call it the Hybrid three, and it has forty one
separate data channels. The Hybrid two, by way of contrast,
had about eight, so researchers could measure precise injuries to
(30:36):
different parts different week points in the human body. And
originally the Hybrid three was supposed to impersonate an average male.
In the eighties, they started including what they called large
males and small female dummies. Nineteen eighty four they introduce
(30:57):
child models, little tiny like Hawaii versions of crash test dummies.
But as we have been teasing for most of this episode,
eventually they decided to go past the imitations and stick
with some original bodies for testing. Like I said, I
(31:25):
kind of thought that maybe I had made that up
in my sick imagination, but not the case. They get
to a point where they're like, like you said, well,
nothing's really better than the real thing, kind of like
the way they made you like dissect fetle pigs and
cats in high school despite any misgivings. Actually, you could
probably have opted out of that. I bet if you
got a note or if it was like for religious
(31:47):
reasons perhaps, but maybe nowadays nowadays, but back then it
was you get chastised. The website Ethics Unwrapped, which is
a service from the University of Texas's Macombs School of Business,
actually has a case study on this, uh and it's
entitled Cadavers in Car Safety Research, And here's a little
(32:09):
little snippet. In nineteen ninety three was widely disclosed that
research engineers at Heidelberg University in Germany had used two
hundred adult and child cadavers in simulated car tests. The
researchers argued that the use of human cadavers was necessary
to study the actual effects of these crashes on the body.
They insisted that the research would save lives because it
would help engineers design safer cars. And as we know,
(32:33):
you know, Germans are known for their engineering prowess and
they're you know, manufacturing, and German cars are some of
the best out there. So I would argue they probably
were right. But it's a really bad pr look, isn't it.
I think? Was it? Was? It like a big kerfuffle
came out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was not a good look.
(32:55):
I mean, using cadavers in this way. It wasn't something
they made out out a whole cloth. It's not a
new thing, and it's still not gone completely since the
nineteen thirties, back when researchers at Wayne State University were
throwing bodies down elevator shafts. Every part of a car
(33:18):
touching on safety benefited in some way from testing with cadavers.
We see that Ford, for instance, everybody knows Ford, and
they are good cars. Look, I dunked on Henry Ford.
I have dunked on Henry Ford for many years. I
drive a Ford Escape right now and it's a pretty
(33:40):
good car. Well, I got a good deal whatever, fair enough,
fair enough. So this company was promoting what they called
their inflatable rear seat belts in the twenty eleven Explorer,
and the Explorer for anybody playing along at home, is
nicer than the Escape. I'm that cheap. So Ford says,
(34:03):
this gives you five times the protection of the conventional
seat belt. But if you look at their promo and
their pr and stuff, you'll see that they don't really
like to publicize the fact that dead bodies were used
in the development of that seat belt. Yeah, no, it's
(34:26):
it's definitely not something you come right out and at advertise.
But here here's the perspective from pre Prasade as a
former chief safety researcher at Ford on this very subject, saying,
it's still very important. Even though we have very good
math modeling of dummies, human modeling hasn't reached that state yet,
meaning there's still not the modeling is still inferior to
(34:50):
using the cadavers. Yeah, there's not a way yet to
run moulation. I get that, that makes sense. So now,
of course this is something that publicly, at the very
least automakers kind of want to stay away from because
it is such a pr nightmare. A Swedish researcher in
two thousand and eight told the Express in newspaper that
(35:13):
General Motors and Saab we're using cadavers in research, and
the companies denied it. Yeah, and it seems like they're
legit there because they don't have the resources, the infrastructure
that you would need to conduct a successful crash test
with a cadaver. But you know who does a lot
(35:34):
of your favorite universities, the old NHTSA, the National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration. Right now, as you are hearing this
if you listen. In the United States, they are funding
multiple cadaver test per year and some of those schools
(35:54):
also get funding from automakers. Yeah, and this kind of
makes me think of like the red market kind of
stuff that we've talked about, and stuff they don't want
you to know, our body brokers, you know, and all
of that. That's much more of us stuff they don't
want you to know. Topic that we've covered in various iterations.
But it's like, who are these bodies? Right? Unclaimed John
(36:18):
or Jane? Does is just the term it's used for,
you know, unidentified bodies that are found? Is that is
that right? Or people that are maybe donated their bodies
to science. People who donate their bodies to science and
don't have a clear understanding of how that body would
be used. You might think it's being used in cancer
research or something like that, not knowing that it is
(36:42):
just stuffed into a Honda Odyssey and driven into wall. Oh.
The humanity, the humanity of it all gotta feel not
great by the way, too, for whoever has to clean
these experiments up? True, and also we have to ask,
is there a greater good argument if you are if
(37:05):
you are donating your body to science and your body
provides data that helps build a better car that helps
save other people's lives, is that not a noble thing?
I mean. A spokesman for Ford, a guy named West Shorewood,
said that most companies are moving toward digital modeling if
(37:27):
they can, because it's way way more cost effective to
do a bunch of computer simulations than it is to
do one test with a human corpse. Yeah, and I
think a lot of the people that maybe have objections, Well,
first of all, there is the we talked about this
on the Stuff That I Want you to Know episodes.
You can't tick a box and say I want my
(37:48):
body used for this, but not this, this, but not that,
you know, So there should be a bit of a
eyes wide open thing when you're deciding to do that
in the first place, because you can't pick and choose,
so it's kind of fair game. And really, in this situation,
nothing truly nefarious is happening, right, It's it's it's not
(38:08):
like they're getting these illegally or they're, you know, right,
something nasty behind the scenes. But I think the people
that object to stuff like this is probably on religious
grounds where It's like this is in some way, you know, unclean,
you know, to use the human vessel, the human temple
in these ways. I mean, what's next, Let's be as
(38:31):
cold as these folks. What's next? Do you check the
box about where your body goes? And then you check
the car you want to be tested in? Like I'm
okay with being used. It would my body be used
in crash test, but it can only be in the
newest Maserati, Right, yeah, yeah, exactly, these hips shall no
(38:53):
Honda Odyssey touch right right? Still put me still, put
me in anything other than a Porsche, etc. There's good
news though. Albert King, who is a professor at Wayne State,
has been working in cadaver research since nineteen sixty six
and said the school had fallen off with their testing
(39:15):
in recent years. They used to do like one cadaver
a month, and at the time of his interview is
saying they do no more than maybe a handful every year.
And this comes to us from something published in nineteen
ninety five, so several decades of past. But I said,
there are benefits of this work, and he's on record
(39:38):
in the Journal of Trauma for this, and he said
the safe the journal. Look, yeah, if you're if you're
hanging out one afternoon and you're like, my day is
going too well, check out the Journal of Trauma. They're
doing important work. It's just kind of a downer. And
and Professor King estimates that the safety improvements may by
(40:00):
these tests up to nineteen eighty seven saved at minimum
eight thousand, five hundred lives a year. So that's as
many as the guy that invented the seatbelt. No, no,
not as many as Neil's bowl, and no relation, I wish,
but but it looks like that there is a decline
in using bodies to test auto accidents, as we can
(40:25):
see in how Cadaver's made your Car Safer from Wired.
There's not too much to be done now improving safety
inside of a car. No, you remember those like you
see them all the time, and movies from the forties
and the sixties, those uh steering wheels that had like
the head of a torpedo in the middle, just facing
(40:48):
right for impaling the whole face. You know, that's stuff's done.
That's stuff's done. Airbag tech is pretty good, you know
what I mean. That will save your life. And again
you can't really do much with the design of what
a car is. A car is what a car is.
But we've gone far enough along in the in the
evolution of this technology that there's certain things that just
(41:11):
you hit a ceiling, and it's a good ceiling. In
this case, it's a safety ceiling that even the cheapest
of cars, you know, are going to be relatively safe
to occupy. And the next logical step is going to
be addressing human error on the side of the driver.
And that's still yeah the damas yeah, yeah, who are
(41:34):
you excited? I don't know, man. And again, you know
you've talked about this on car stuff too, where like
a big part of a reticence from some about autonomous
vehicles is less about yeah, sure, the safety of it's great,
but also like it kind of eliminates car culture in
a certain sense because people like cars because they go
room room and then they allow you. But then I
(41:54):
think will happen is that will become more of a
niche kind of interest and you'll still be able to
drive them on tracks. But I get I'm sorry, I'm
getting ahead of myself. There could become a future where
it is illegal for you to drive yourself on a
public roadway. Yeah, yeah, it's it's quite possible. And then
you go to the greater good argument. But this this
(42:16):
is a story for a future episode of Ridiculous History.
Right now, we just want you to know. One, crash
Test dummies definitely a thing. Two. A lot of those
were dead bodies of actual human beings and rugged up
bears or drugged up bears, but not cocaine drugged up bears.
I feel like a bear on a lot of cocaine.
(42:38):
I've never tried cocaine. I don't endorse it, but I
feel like I feel like a bear out a really
active drug would probably bad news because steer the car
a little bit, you know, it'd be a bad news
just from flailing around. They would. Yeah, absolutely, Now, not
not a good not a good situation there. And we're
gonna get in a little bit more tangents and trivia
(43:01):
kind of stuff. But I did want to point out, um,
the Crash Test Dummies cartoon. It was like a special
It was just a one time aired thing and it
wasn't like cell animation. It was really bad nineties CGI
kind of like it wasn't all serious. It was the
action figures were the action figures and then there was
(43:21):
a series based on the action figure. So I had
said I thought it was maybe the other way around,
which is often the case like with he Man and
Ninja Turtles and all that. But some of the book
comic book. But then there was the cartoon. And then
because of the cartoon or the action figures in the
cartoon were kind of hand in hand. But the characters
names were Vincent Larry who were the main guy. As
their vehicles, they all came with a vehicle crash car
(43:44):
with Dash. I guess Dash is like a little guy.
Maybe Larry had the student driver car with Axel that
was their passenger. Then you have Darryl who drove the
crash cycle. Did they have a dog? Did they have
an animal? I bet you Dash was made the animal. Okay,
I'm guessing, but I don't know for a fact. I'm
just looking at this list. And then we had spare Tire,
(44:06):
which I'm guessing it was a fat joke because he
seemed a y. It also drove a crash shopper, which
is sort of like a biker gang kind of thing
where you picture like maybe you know, a spare tire
is a slang for like a belly, and then you
had Skid the kid who drove an ATV, which I
(44:26):
thought was fun. And then you had a pair hubcap
and bumper who had a crash lawnmower. Oh yeah, well
you get in situations. Yeah, us, I've got to stop
saying you get in situations. Yeah, man, it applies, all right, whatever,
But we are going to return next week with some
(44:48):
uh with some deep dives into the history of turn signals,
and we hope you joined us for that in the
In the meantime, maybe nol to the point about tangents
in trivia. We take a second to shout out some
horrific highway safety films. If you're having too good of
an afternoon, you've read the Journal of Trauma and you
(45:09):
think I'm still feeling too nice, maybe you should check
out these films. That's right. One of the most infamous
of these was one called Signal thirty, which is funny
because I didn't know this, but there was a band
in my hometown. There was a kind of a punk
scene there, and they were this punk band called Signal thirty,
and that was the name of a traffic safety scared
(45:33):
straight kind of video. They used real accident footage to
show the results like Faces of Death style. But also
there was a weird pro car bent to this there.
It was almost like propaganda where it put the onus
of blame on the drivers and not the automobiles. And
(45:55):
this was the time where some of these cars still
maybe left something to be desired in terms of safety, right, yeah,
one hundred percent. I also want to shout out I
want to shout out two things that our show is
very biased about. The first is an excellent documentary called
Hell's Highway, The True Story of Highway Safety Films by
our pal Brett Wood, who has also made a number
(46:18):
of early fiction shows with us before before our parent
company really got into it. So check out Brett Wood's work.
And also, while you're there, you'll want to check out Max.
I hope I don't make this awkward for you. You'll
want to check out Ephemeral's excellent work on these highway
(46:40):
safety films. Max. As we wrap up today, could you
talk a little bit about that to give people a
heads up. Yeah. So, there was this weird phenomenon that
happened because of so many kids in the fifties being
subjected to these awful films like single thirty or like
these things. If you look at them, you watch them,
they're basically like their horror film The Faces of Death,
(47:01):
when that was a thing where you'd see like suicide
being an anthology of clips of real deaths. Yeah, so
they were very very not for children to call the
video nasties sometimes. Yeah, that was a fun, weird term
that was used to describe some of these types of
snuff adjacent films, you know. Yeah, So we went down
(47:25):
this rabbit hole a couple of years ago and we
talked to doctor Bernice Murphy who is an author and
a professor, and she wrote the book The Highway Horror Film,
which is just talking about like all these films come out,
like some of the films like Psycho is often attributed
to this, like this genre of film. But how so
it's a motor hotel that people stop. It's a road movie. Yeah,
(47:47):
I got you, Okay, interesting, I didn't think about so
like in the film, maybe there would be someone that
was like on a road trip and then the horrific
event happened. There's there's a couple, I believe there's four
different types that she outlines, and one of the types
is like you're now in the middle of nowhere, but
these areas that you weren't able to access before, but
(48:07):
now because the cars, you're able to access these areas
and stuff. Hell, Texas Jamesaw Massacre kind of falls under
that exactly banner. Yeah, the Dark Side of the Great
American Road Trip for surely did not think about that.
That's super interesting and that's one of your favorites, I know,
And and that's where we're going to because you know,
this whole episode that we have doctor Bernice Murphy on
(48:29):
is about ridiculous history hero her Carvey, who did a
number of highway safety films, especially a lot of drunk
driving films at Centro On Films where he worked for
thirty something the years, but he also did Carnival Souls.
The funny thing is Carnival Souls is really, if you
think about it, a highway safety film because the kids
being reckless driving and they drive their car off the thing,
(48:51):
and I think Skip Elzheimer, who's our other our other
guests on that episode, he outlines at the very end
by saying, uh, drive, I've step kids, or your soul
will be tortured as you slowly descent to Hell. Or
something along those lines, which is basically the plot of
Carnival Souls. If you haven't seen Carnival Souls, watched it
and get ready for all the organ. Yes, there's a
(49:14):
lot of organ uh ed, there's a lot more to
discuss in the history of the automobile. Now, Noel, you,
Max and I are going to call it a day
with a great thank you, I think to to our
research associate and superproducer Max, as well as to Alex Williams,
(49:34):
who can posed this slapping Bob else we think indeed,
oh man, yeah, slapping away over there. Um. We'd also
like to thank christophrastiotis here in spirit. Eve's Jeff Coats
our boy, Alex Williams, you already said that, but I
just want to say it twice. So nice, he sayd twy.
Jonathan's chicklet. We're gonna see him in person really soon.
(49:56):
We're going to south By Southwest. Yeah, he's gonna be there.
He's gonna be there. M all right, we'll see how
it goes. Um. But yeah, thanks to you, Ben for
we were kind of our own Larry and Jerry what
were their names? H Vincent Larry doing crash test references
yeah that was it. Yeah, I mean I watched it though, no,
(50:17):
you daled it. This is awesome. Tune in. Tune in soon, everybody.
We are going to debate turn signals and I'll probably
talk trash about BMW's We'll see you next time, folks.
(50:38):
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