This one is a corker! According to Vägverket, the Swedish Road Administration, General Motors has used ten human cadavers for crash test research over the last year. While we applaud GM’s authentic approach in the quest for improved safety it is perhaps just a little macabre. It’s hard to imagine having a day job that involves strapping a chilled and lifeless human body into a car and then ‘investigating’ the post accident remains.
Vägverket suspect that the GM brand involved in the testing was Saab based on it being the most safety focussed brand in the GM lineup and pointed out that the cadavers were people “who donated their own bodies”.
The cadavers were used in experiments that are designed to improve the development of crash test dummies as well as more accurately investigate the injuries sustained by actual human bodies. A byproduct of the cadaver testing would be a lifetime of dinner party stories for the folks working in this particular department.
Saab and GM are yet to acknowledge these somewhat extraordinary claims.
[Source : The Local via Autoblog]
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That’s seriously disturbed. I wonder how they organized that. There must been all kinds of legalities to wade through.
Not as hard as you’d think! I read a great book a couple of years ago about the bizarre things that are done with human bodies, and the one overarching point is that it’s generally always for building on the quality of life for those of us still alive. Cadavers in crash testing will presumably provide more realistic data for certain aspects of the tests, and since that’s in the best interests of humanity, it’d be fully supported—though quietly—by the government.
Well, there are enough cadavers used in medical testing. So you’re right. But it’s still so eerily morbid.