Meet the American who invented the crash test dummy, a life-saving innovation
Fox News
Born in Cleveland and raised in California, Samuel W. Alderson helped make highways safer in America and worldwide by creating the crash test dummy — an invention that has saved thousands of lives,
A prolific producer of cutting-edge military hardware in World War II, Alderson is most famous as the father of the crash test dummy. "Before crash test dummies, animals and human cadavers were used in auto crash experiments." The auto fatality rate through the 1960s was more than twice the rate of road fatalities today. Each sensor in a dummy can record up to 20,000 data samples per second. Kerry J. Byrne is a lifestyle reporter with Fox News Digital.
In scientific circles, these objects are known as anthropomorphic test devices — a more accurate indication of their robust capabilities.