Some tests you're better off not doing yourself

This is a recon­struc­tion of a crash involv­ing a sta­tion­ary Ford Fal­con XT sedan being struck in the driver’s door by another vehi­cle trav­el­ling at 50 km/h [30 mph].

Car Crash Test

0 mil­lisec­onds — An exter­nal object touches the driver’s door.

1 ms — The car’s door pres­sure sen­sor detects a pres­sure wave.

2 ms — An accel­er­a­tion sen­sor in the C-pillar behind the rear door also detects a crash event.

2.5 ms - A sen­sor in the car’s cen­tre detects crash vibrations.

5 ms — Car’s crash com­puter checks for insignif­i­cant crash events, such as a shop­ping trol­ley impact or inci­den­tal con­tact. It is still work­ing out the sever­ity of the crash. Door intru­sion struc­ture begins to absorb energy.

6.5 ms — Door pres­sure sen­sor reg­is­ters peak pressures.

7 ms — Crash com­puter con­firms a seri­ous crash and cal­cu­lates its actions.

8 ms — Com­puter sends a “fire” sig­nal to side airbag. Mean­while, B-pillar begins to crum­ple inwards and energy begins to trans­fer into cross-car load path beneath the occupant.

8.5 ms — Side airbag sys­tem fires.

15 ms — Roof begins to absorb part of the impact. Airbag bursts through seat foam and begins to fill.

17 ms — Cross-car load path and struc­ture under rear seat reach max­i­mum load.
Airbag cov­ers occupant’s chest and begins to push the shoul­der away from impact zone.

20 ms — Door and B-pillar begin to push on front seat. Airbag begins to push occupant’s chest away from the impact.

27 ms — Impact veloc­ity has halved from 50 km/h to 23.5 km/h. A “pusher block” in the seat moves occupant’s pelvis away from impact zone. Airbag starts con­trolled deflation.

30 ms — The Fal­con has absorbed all crash energy. Airbag remains in place. For a brief moment, occu­pant expe­ri­ences max­i­mum force equal to 12 times the force of gravity.

45 ms — Occu­pant and airbag move together with deform­ing side structure.

50 ms — Crash com­puter unlocks car’s doors. Pas­sen­ger safety cell begins to rebound, push­ing doors away from occupant.

70 ms — Airbag con­tin­ues to deflate. Occu­pant moves back towards mid­dle of car. Engi­neers clas­sify crash as “complete”.

150–300 ms — Occu­pant becomes aware of collision.