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February 1, 2008
Q. His bare buttocks rest on the cold steel shelf, smooth hairless skin a ghastly pinkish-orange. Alongside are his head, rib-cage, arms, hands, legs. His toeless feet lie nearby. No, it's not the grisly scene of a ritualistic slaying but rather serves to save lives. How so?
A. He's the midsize adult male anthropomorphic test dummy Hybrid III, by Denton ATP. Such human surrogates, simulating how a real person's body might respond in a car wreck, are loaded with sensors for checking data on the head, neck, chest, thigh. These are then added to “data from impact and deceleration tests on cadavers, pig carcasses, or eager graduate students,” says Erico Guizzo in “Anatomy of a Crash-Test Dummy” in IEEE Spectrum magazine. Dummies are also used in tests of roller coaster safety, simulated train wrecks, school-bus seat safety, motorcycle air bags, ski-slope protection nets.
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