While Grownups Squabbled, Children Died
Meanwhile, tests to save childrens' lives stalled
The Plain Dealer – March 3, 1993
SERIES: DEADLY DELAYS
RED TAPE COSTS LIVES
FOURTH OF A SERIES
By Keith Epstein
PLAIN DEALER BUREAU
WASHINGTON
Through all the years the grownups squabbled over dummies, real kids died in car crashes.
Automakers and federal regulators fought for more than a decade over who could create the best simulated adult. And that stalled development of a simulated 6-year-old to test child seats.
The story illustrates big reasons for the failure of government to promptly take steps to save lives in transportation accidents – opposition from industry lawyers and engineers.
The government wanted to adopt a single dummy so it could force automakers to strengthen the sides of cars and trucks, preventing people from being severely injured in crashes.
The dummies would be placed in test cars and rammed into brick walls. This would allow the government to set engineering standards for car strength. The mannequins would mimic the impact on real people. Engineers would take measurements.
Result: Crash standards. Instead, the government itself ran into a wall.
For 13 years, it went like this:
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration preferred its dummy, Sid – for “side impact dummy.”
European automakers favored theirs, named Euro-Sid.
Naturally, General Motors Corp. thought its Bio-Sid was the best of all.
“We were arguing back and forth with GM, ‘Nah, my dummy’s better than your dummy,’ and they’d say, ‘Nah our dummy’s better than yours,’ said Barry Felrice, the highway agency’s top rule-making official.
Again and again, researchers knocked each other’s dummies in comparisons with cadavers.
Somebody would call the neck of a researcher’s dummy too rigid. Another would say it was relatively spineless.
The pelvis of one was called into question. Neither GM nor BMW liked Washington Sid’s metal ribs.
When GM argued that grownup versions of Sid should have shoulders and arms that moved – not just a urethane stump – the government opted for further study.
The study consisted of standing at a Washington intersection, where highway agency employees counted passengers in 125 cars as they passed – to see how many were riding with arms down, like Washington Sid.
In research circles, this is known as the quest for “biofidelity” – perfect simulation of the human body. Perfection being impossible, there were shouting matches by phone, name-calling in person.
“It was a bit childish in a way,” said Jerry R. Curry, the highway agency’s former administrator. “But the people arguing were engineers who’d spent their lives working on dummies. It was their life’s work.”
Meanwhile, Ohio State University mechanical engineering Professor Richard Stalnaker had been working on a 6-year-old dummy the government needed to crash-test child seats. The 6-year-old should have been finished in 1989.
But that’s when the highway agency got around to comparing the three Sids. They needed so many dummies for tests that it tied up the nation’s only dummy manufacturer. Stalnaker’s 6-year-old, Hybrid III, had to wait.
“I got stopped dead,” he said.
Once the test results were in, Curry – a retired Army general and a controversial maverick – took matters into his own hands. He persuaded GM’s chairman at the time, Robert Stempel, to go with Washington Sid.
Then Curry had to convince Congress, the Office of Management and Budget, and former Vice President Dan Quayle’s Council on Competitiveness. He made a cartoon.
Using animation, the cartoon showed what happens to the inside of a body in a side crash – the heart flopping back and forth, the liver up and down, the lungs punctured by the ribs.
Curry took his videotape to congressional staffers, to the bean-counters at the Office of Management and Budget, to Quayle’s body of deregulators – and to the TV networks.
Late last year, the government’s Sid became official – the highway agency adopted the regulations – though they won’t be fully in force until 1996.
“All I did was sell the product, basic marketing,” Curry boasted. “The way to solve problems in Washington is to figure out a political way – not a substance way – to neutralize the opposition. I took risks. I made enemies, but I got it done.”
Well, nearly.
Researchers still bickered over whose dummy was better. Complicating matters was language in the regulation allowing Bio-Sid and Euro-Sid to “become available as … test devices in the future.”
“This could go on forever,” said Felrice.
At least, officials said, Sid was getting made. He had accelerometers in his pelvis and ribs, a shock absorber between the rib cage and spine, and the urethane stump arms. In official highway agency parlance, Sid was “an appropriate human surrogate.”
As for the quest for the perfect simulated 6-year-old? The highway agency spent large sums making its own, modified from a dummy from the 1970s. But it is widely viewed as inadequate, and some doubt it will stack up to Stalnaker’s – setting the stage for another skirmish.
“The government’s made a 6-year-old dummy of its own that’s a piece of junk, basically just a thorax,” said Stalnaker. “Now they’re going to have to dump that and adopt mine. In all this time, we could have had the other dummy we need – for a 3-year-old.”
——-
Other stories from this series:
Deadly Delays: Bureaucracy is Killing Us – Long after wreckage is examined for clues, causes determined, and solutions urged – thousands of Americans still risk death or injury in similar accidents. (The Plain Dealer)
Ice on Jets – Recurring Risk, Tolerated for Years – Despite pinpointing causes of multiple commercial airliner crashes, Washington does nothing to require simple, proven remedies advocated for years
Flight 405: The Story of Four Passengers- Strangers on a plane, going about the routine business of flying, trusted that commercial aviation had become as safe as airlines and the government could make it. They were wrong.
Killer Trucks – Why the Slaughter Won’t Stop – Trucks with self-adjusting brakes would have fewer accidents, causing less damage and saving hundreds of lives. Yet the government dawdled in requiring them.
While Grownups Squabbled, Children Died – Battles between automakers and regulators for more than a decade stalled development of safer child seats.
Feds Shrug Off a Life-Saver for Commuter Planes – Commuter airline flights crashed repeatedly into the ground for lack of a simple device urged for years by federal safety officials. The FAA declined. Planes kept crashing.
Cessnas Crash, but Agencies Do Nothing - For decades, Cessnas chocked from a carburetor flaw known to the manufacturer and the government. Yet pilots had never heard of the problem, and the government required no fix.
Yellow Coffins – Modern school buses are among the safest means of transport. Yet when accidents occur, children are often trapped. Still, the government for years allowed preventable tragedies to recur.
Safety Board Has No Teeth – The National Transportation Safety Board is widely known for investigating accidents. What many people don’t realize is that it’s powerless – a toothless tiger.
