Vhe Federal Statistical Office reported a sad record half a century ago: 21,332 road users had lost their lives in accidents in 1971. In 2020, this number had fallen by around 87 percent to 2,719 fatalities, and a decrease to around 2,500 is expected for the past year. Never before have fewer fatalities been reported, even though the number of vehicles has more than tripled and the average annual mileage has increased in these five decades.
The pandemic may have contributed a small part to this positive development, but the main causes lie elsewhere. They range from expanding the rescue service network to optimizing vehicle safety. Last but not least, those extras stuffed full of electronics who risk their virtual lives on behalf of humans in crash tests play a major role: the dummies.
Some time ago, their extended family grew thanks to the biofidel dummy. He is not, as his name might suggest, a particularly cheerful specimen, but is characterized by a closer relationship to the human original. “Biofidelity means that the dummy is as close as possible to the human model. Then you not only get more realistic motion sequences in the crash test, but you can also draw more precise conclusions about the probability of injury to humans from the damage pattern,” says Peter Schimmelpfennig, Managing Partner of CTS. The company operates a crash test center in Münster. The biofidelic dummy is manufactured in the associated manufactory. The areas of application for the humanoid dummy are diverse. It is used in accident reconstruction and as a training object for rescue services, for blasting tests, for checking amusement park equipment or for validation tests for autonomous driving. She serves the ballistics office in Ulm as a chauffeur or passenger in armored limousines in order to determine their protective effect.
The dummy was developed and optimized over the years by the forensic expert for traffic accidents Michael Weyde from Berlin in cooperation with the Dresden University of Applied Sciences. “The starting point was the realization that the damage that occurred in the crash test in simulated vehicle-pedestrian collisions was unrealistic because the usual dummies with their steel or aluminum skeleton were simply too stiff,” reports the accident researcher. For this reason, even in the prototypes, instead of steel, aluminum or plastics, Weyde used materials whose physical properties corresponded as closely as possible to the real “components” of the human body. Bones made of epoxy resin and aluminum powder largely correspond to the human counterpart in terms of density, structure and breaking strength, as do ligaments and tendons made of polypropylene or soft tissue made of silicone and acrylic.
In contrast to conventional test dummies, which represent men, women and children in different height and weight classes, the biofidelic version is currently only available in the standard format: 1.78 meters tall and weighing 78 kilograms. She thus represents the European 50 percent man: Statistically, half are below these values, the other half are above them. A biofidel dummy with the surname Primus can even be X-rayed immediately after the crash test in the CTS laboratory. Damage to bones and tissue parts becomes visible, which allows detailed conclusions to be drawn about the degree of injury. In this way, the humanoid twin becomes more and more like its human brother. However, Primus does not (yet) have a vaccination card.