Today on one of my news websites, Digg.com, I found a rather interesting link to a consumer reports video archive. This video archive contains videos of over 150 makes and models of vehicles in their crash test. I checked out the Jeep Grand Cherokee, Chevrolet Cavalier, and the Honda Civic (the cars, or related cars to the ones that my family and I drive). It was pretty interesting watching these cars in slow motion and watching the dummy’s head do its thing…. it doesn’t look pleasant.

The question that bewilders me with these crash tests though is, aren’t the dummies like not doing anything. I’m sure that some engineer of some sort has figured out the perfect crash dummy to mirror the driver and passenger’s physics in the shattering car, but don’t we as living breathing humans have something called reaction?

Those poor dummies, they don’t even see it coming.

Watching the side hit on the later Honda Civic models it looks pretty much like the driver pulled up and started a picnic on train tracks while a freight train comes barreling and blaring full horn. Does that scenario of one car being still and another other car t-boning it really happen in the majority?

If I were in charge of the crash dummy testing I would program the dummies to be sitting in the car, complaining about the sun being too bright, fighting over the cabin climate, or even over the each dummy’s favorite radio station… They would be driving along when all of a sudden a huge…. wall…. is right in front of them. One dummy screams, another spills coffee, and the kid in the backseat pushes ‘A’ to jump on a walking mushroom (yes, a goomba) and get a coin. The car slams into the wall with the passengers that were aware reaching up to cover their faces and locking their knees on the floor board, because what else would you do when you know you are about to go from 50 to 0 in no time flat?

My dummies would then climb out of the car, picking up whatever pieces they had lost and go plug themselves into a data port to upload all the crash data they received. Then of course they would all go get brooms and do a quick clean up before their next short drive.

I would be a millionaire…