BROADCASTS.com

Bloomberg

At first glance, Humanetics Innovative Solutions Inc. looks like it has a pretty sweet business model. The suburban Detroit company is the world\u2019s largest maker of crash-test dummies, the steel-and-vinyl humanoids stuffed with electronics that gauge how a car crash could injure a human body. The company enjoys a global market share exceeding 70 percent, and its dummies can cost as much as $1 million apiece. Regulators in the U.S. and other countries effectively require Humanetics customers to buy at least some of its products.

With a setup like that, you might say, even a dummy could make a fortune. This makes Humanetics Chief Executive Officer Christopher O\u2019Connor laugh, though for a different reason than you might think. He\u2019d much rather discuss the implications of 3D printers and driverless cars than how Humanetics, or any dummy maker, turns a profit. \u201cI\u2019ve said to myself, if I had $10 million, I wouldn\u2019t invest in this business,\u201d O\u2019Connor says. \u201cI love it, but the reality is, you\u2019re not going to make a ton of money. The margins are always going to be tight.\u201d


The business of making and selling crash dummies is odd, and not only because it involves faceless mannequins acting as proxies for the mangled and the dead. Dummy makers spend years and millions of dollars developing products that customers profess to admire but decline to buy. Vehicles and drivers have changed dramatically, but the model of dummy used in many government-required crash tests has been around for four decades. The industry sells a mere 200 to 250 dummies in a decent year and generated $111 million in revenue globally in 2016, according to market-research company Technavio.

At the Humanetics headquarters in Farmington Hills, Mich., and its factory in Huron, Ohio, cubicles and worktables are littered with flesh-colored dummy heads, feet, and hands, and parts carts hold shiny aluminum elbows, knees, and clavicles. They\u2019ll be assembled by some of Humanetics\u2019 750 employees into anthropomorphic devices of various genders and ages. Information gleaned from dummies has helped automakers develop air bags, advanced seat belts, penetration-resistant glass, and energy-absorbing frames. Dummy performance in crash tests is central to the popular vehicle safety rating, which influences sales. Given all this, it seems like Humanetics\u2019 continual improvement of its product ought to produce robust growth. The problem is that dummies, unlike humans, don\u2019t die, though a decade ago the industry almost did.

In Volvo Car Group\u2019s cavernous crash facility in Gothenburg, Sweden, eight banks of 4,000-watt lamps shine on a V60 station wagon as technicians scurry about making final preparations for a side-impact crash test. A bank of electronic measuring equipment rests on the hood. Two dummies wait, one in the front seat, the other directly behind.

The techs disperse. The garage is silent but for a voice on an intercom counting down from 10. At zero, a flat barrier accelerates toward the car at 31 mph and T-bones it. The scene is placid one second and then suddenly, jarringly violent\u2014as in a real collision.

Then the serious work begins, much of it involving the collection and analysis of data from the sensors inside the dummies: Did a rib deflect far enough that it could have fractured? Might the intrusion of the driver\u2019s door have punctured an internal organ? Volvo runs as many as 10 full-scale crash tests a week, including head-on collisions, lateral and angular impacts, and outdoor tests in which vehicles are run into a roadside ditch to see how the bodies\u2014that is, the dummies\u2019 bodies\u2014are tossed around inside.

The company owns about 100 dummies, some brand-new, some as old as 40. A number of Volvo\u2019s Humanetics dummies represent a 5-foot-9-inch, 172-pound male, which at one point was a statistically average man. (Said man is now pushing 200.) Volvo also has dummies that stand in for larger men, small women, and children of various ages. Then there\u2019s a replica moose\u2014collisions with Bullwinkle are common in Sweden\u2014that resembles an oil drum tipped sideways and propped on four stilts.



Some of the early crash dummies, in the mid-20th century, were human cadavers flung down elevator shafts and hogs impaled on steering columns. There were live humans, too. In 1954, U.S. Air Force Colonel John Stapp, a physician studying how deceleration affected military pilots in crashes, rode a rocket sled at 632 mph on a New Mexico test track. He didn\u2019t hit anything, but blood filled his eyes as vessels burst under the pressure. His research caught the attention of automakers; later he founded the annual Stapp Car Crash Conference, which still contributes to crash-test development.

The U.S. highway fatality rate in the 1950s ranged from 5 to 7 deaths per 1 million miles traveled. Autos were built with stiff exteriors that transferred the deadly energy of a collision to their occupants. Interiors were loaded with sharp doorknobs, radio buttons, rearview m...