Crash tests that are bang on

TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO

Volvo's XC60 - known for its outstanding safety features - was put through an array of tests by the automaker before regulators reviewed it.

Jim Kenzie

SPECIAL TO THE STAR

Some of the coolest vintage video on the auto industry involves early attempts at crash testing.

Those who think car safety began with Ralph Nader's scurrilous screed Unsafe at Any Speed (more appropriately, Inaccurate at Any Level) would be particularly intrigued by film from the 1920s and '30s showing cars being flipped off ramps, crashed into trees, even (in some late-'60's Volvo footage) driven off the roofs of buildings, to see how they perform in collisions.

After all, car engineers, designers, salespeople and corporate executives have spouses and children, too.

Crash testing started getting a lot more serious, a lot more standardized, when governments began mandating specific crash safety tests for automobiles in the 1960s.

To prevent expensive engineering designs from failing to meet these standards after they had been completed, car companies had to determine in advance if the car was going to pass.

There was – and remains – some concern about how relevant some of the specific standards are to the real world, and as such, whether cars are designed to "pass the test" as opposed to being truly safe in the real world.

Nonetheless, the need for accurate measurements of the forces involved in various standardized tests have without question made cars stronger and more protective.

Certain companies have taken on safety as a primary brand value. To its (largely forgotten) credit, Ford tried this back in the 1950s, when it made various safety features such as lap belts, deep-dish steering wheels and padded dashboards standard or optional on most models. As is often the case with pioneers, Ford's efforts were mostly wasted, as the buying public did not see the value in what the company was offering or at least weren't prepared to pay extra for it.

Around the same time, another iconic safety brand, Volvo, made three-point seatbelts standard in its cars, and didn't allow its patents to get in the way of other carmakers who chose to follow suit.

To their everlasting shame, most did not, and had to wait until governments mandated their installation. (Sharing that shame, those same governments usually did not mandate the usage of belts until much later.)

Not surprisingly, Volvo has one of the most advanced crash-testing laboratories in the industry, at its corporate headquarters in Gothenberg, Sweden.

Among its features is one wing that's mounted on big hovercraft-like mobile air cushions, which allow the entire wing to be pivoted so it intersects the main corridor at any angle from dead ahead to 90 degrees. Thus, cars can be launched down the movable wing into another movable target car at any imaginable angle to determine how well the vehicles perform under more variable circumstances.

The timing of such collisions is such that if a vehicle arrives at its intended crash point a second too early or a second too late, it misses the mark by tens of metres.

Ironic, isn't it, that car companies – and directors of action movies – spend hundreds of hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to replicate what we manage to pull off in the real world thousands of times a day.

These labs can also replicate rear-enders, T-bones, rollovers – every imaginable type of crash.

There's lots of work before and after the crashes, too. Increasingly sophisticated modelling, requiring ever-more-powerful computers, already predicts the results of the physical tests before they are performed. Right now, no government seems prepared to accept the simulations as proof of the design, but you'd have to think that will come, at huge savings to everyone involved.

Volvo, along with a handful of other carmakers, also tracks real-world crashes within about 100 km of its head office, to ensure the cars perform as well there as they do in the crash-test lab.

These labs employ ever-more-realistic dummies that mimic the human body and allow precise measurements of the forces exerted in various types of collisions.

Speaking of film, Volvo and irony, you ought to see the videos prepared by Volvo's crash-test department featuring "Clive Alive," the world's oldest crash test dummy.

A crash test dummy, rapping about car safety with a Swedish accent?

As Larry the Cable Guy would say, "I don't care who you are. That's funny right there."

More videos from Wheels.ca and our partners