Why researchers are crashing cars in Virginia

RUCKERSVILLE, Va. — Before you buy a vehicle, there’s an incredible amount of time, research, and testing that goes into creating it.

Part of that includes crash testing to see how safe you’ll be inside a vehicle in the event of an accident.

Much of that crash testing takes place in Virginia at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).

IIHS describes itself as, “an independent, nonprofit scientific and educational organization dedicated to reducing deaths, injuries, and property damage from motor vehicle crashes through research and evaluation and through education of consumers, policymakers, and safety professionals.

The Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI) shares and supports this mission through scientific studies of insurance data representing the human and economic losses resulting from the ownership and operation of different types of vehicles and by publishing insurance loss results by vehicle make and model.”

I went to the facility to see what goes into this research and how it’s making a difference worldwide in the auto industry.

Erin Miller/WTKR

The day began in a lab room 650 ft. away from the crash test site. On the morning I was there, engineers were prepping a 2024 Lincoln Nautilus and taking painstakingly precise measurements of everything.

With a robotic manipulator arm, they measure how far the dummy is sitting from the driver’s seat to the angle of the sea, and how the seat belt is worn.

Engineers, along with representatives from Ford, started this prep work hours before the crash test was even scheduled.

“These guys work really, really hard to prep these vehicles for these tests to make sure they’re going to run on time and that everything’s going to work out just rights,” says Joseph Young.

WTKR

Joseph Young is the Director of Media Relations at IIHS. As we walk around the vehicle, he tells me what they’re testing for.

“One of the things we’re looking closely at is the dummy’s movement, especially this rear-seated dummy. We don’t want to see that it gets too close to the seatback in front of it. We’re also looking closely at how the seat belt interacts with the hips of the dummy and the chest,” he says.

One way to do that, I learned, is by adding a little paint to the dummy. When the vehicle crashes, the dummies will likely bump into something inside the vehicle. When they hit the front seat, or the side airbag, for example, the paint will smear, and researchers will know exactly where the dummy hit.

WTKR

Advertisement

If you’re in the market for a luxury mid-size SUV it’s probably a good idea to check out the results from the Lincon Nautilus’ crash test because then you’ll be able to compare it to other vehicles on the market.

“We will pull the dummy injury values from those dummies very quickly and [researchers] start analysis right away,” Young says.

Each second, of the 16-second ride, is captured by several cameras inside and out of the vehicle shooting at 500 FPS (frames per second).

I pulled up the safety rating results, and the 2024 Lincoln Nautilus scored well, getting a “good” rating on crashworthiness and seat belts and child restraints.

Raul Arbelaez, Vice President for the Vehicle Research Center says the IIHS rating encourages manufacturers to improve vehicles and that stretches well beyond Virginia.

“In China, throughout Europe [and] other parts of the world — are kind of modeling some of the things we’re doing and taking those approaches to their own consumer information programs,” Arbelaez says.

After I saw this test, I immediately wanted to know how my car stacked up.

If you’re thinking the same thing, click here and you can look up the Make and Model of all vehicles that have received IIHS ratings.