Why Good Crash Test Dummies Cost Over US$1 Million Each

They may look less life-like and attractive compared to mannequins at a department store, but crash test dummies are so much more. They are meant to, first and foremost, save lives and building one can cost over a million US dollars, for good reasons.

According to top crash test dummy manufacturer, Humanetics, based outside of Detroit, there aren’t millions of them around the world, but just a few hundreds of thousands. In a year, only about 300 are sold globally. In other words, they are not mass manufactured and sold for cheap.

Humanetics’ more advanced dummies, THOR, are each made up of over 30,000 parts and from an array of materials: metals, rubbers, foam and plastics. The skull, ribs and pelvis are close replicas of the actual human parts and the “bone structure” is made out of steel. It takes five months to make one.

And then there are the sensors and electronic components that collect countless data during crash tests to determine what parts of the body would suffer serious injuries and which parts would experience minor bruises during different types of crashes. These dummies have to endure tens of thousands of crashes for a lifespan of over 30 years while continuing to collect data accurately.

For many years and even until now, safety agencies use dummies modelled on the male body and this problem is understood by many in the industry. Studies have found that women, for instance, are more likely to suffer from whiplash due to differences in anatomy, muscle mass or sitting positions. Developing a dummy that better represents females  – or adolescents, newborns, pregnant women or the elderly, for that matter – requires more than just scaling the male dummy down.

It’s quite impossible to design one dummy to represent everyone because the average person just doesn’t exist. In order to produce a variety of dummies to better represent a wide range of real-life drivers and passengers, production costs become inevitably higher.

Considering the number of lives that can be saved and medical bills that can be reduced thanks to these faceless models, a million dollars is a steal really.