Crash tests are a very important part for improving and maintaining automotive safety. Car manufacturers use crash testing to determine the safety of a vehicle for its passengers. These tests are done both by the government, and by the manufacturer. For a car to be legal, it has to pass certain government criteria and regulated safety tests to determine the car’s level of safety.

Crash Tests
Crash tests are performed with the help of safety dummies (see below). The way the crash test works is that two adult dummies are put in the two front seats with seatbelts fastened. Then, the vehicle is crashed into a wall. After the crash, the results are evaluated to determine the safety to the passengers. The rating used for these tests are on a star scale, five starts being the best and one star being the worst. For a car to be able to be street legal, it has to make at least one star. eAutomotiveBuyer.com presents you with the approximate scale of how these ratings are determined:

1 Star = 46% or greater chance of getting injured
2 Stars = about 40% chance of injury
3 Stars = about 29% chance of injury
4 Stars = about 15% chance of injury
5 Stars = 10% or less chance of injury


Crash Test Dummies
Crash tests are not just the evaluation of how the car comes out of a serious accident, but how the people in side of it come out of a serious accident; this is where crash dummies become useful. Crash test dummies simulate the effects to the human body during a crash. Recently, there has been a big emphasis on the effects of these accidents using child dummies. On many crash tests, children have been well protected when they were sitting in the backseat. The safety systems of vehicles have been seen to be most effective when the child dummy is placed in the back seat. It is for this reason that many dealerships, manufacturers, and government agencies strongly suggest that children be placed in the back seat and when in the front seat should use booster seats when appropriate.