Crash Test Dummy Gets Its (His?) Due

Imagine that this is the nature of your nearly daily drive: Some heavy-mass vehicle ramming the back of your car (in this case a Cadillac SRX). Imagine that you’ve been doing this for 15 years.

For most of us, the next step would be in some 24/7 chiropractic facility. But for the General Motors 50H-1, it will be a place in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

50H-1, who has been on the job for 15 years and who has participated in more than 50 tests (in addition to rear-end collisions, there were rollovers, highway guard rail testing, and other impactful events) , is an Anthropomorphic Test Device (ATD). His name means that he is a male adult in the 50^th percentile for height and weight. He is a Hybrid III ATD; it (he?) has some 200 brothers and sisters at the GM test site, Barrier Crash Facility, in Milford, Michigan, a the GM Milford Proving Ground.

According to Jack Jensen, a GM Technical Fellow and engineering group manager at the GM ATD lab in Milford, “GM developed the Hybrid III dummy design in the 1980s and shared the patents with government and industry. This is the dummy most widely used in crash testing across the U.S.”

Which also means that 50H-1 has a huge extended family.

Over the years 50H-1 has had to go in for knee and foot work. Makes your joints hurt just thinking about it, doesn’t it?