Our Family Works to Protect
Your Family

To protect you and your family during a crash, we have to understand what happens to your bodies during that fraction of a second of crash impact. To ask you, your spouse, or your kids to voluntarily crash a car into a solid concrete wall would be unthinkable. But that doesn't mean another very important family can't lend a helping hand.

Meet NHTSA's family of crash test dummies, working to better protect you and your family. It takes a myriad of crash test dummies to understand how we fare during frontal impact crashes, side impacts, rear impacts, and air bag deployment. This family of dummies helps us understand and measure the human body's movement, vehicle performance, and the performance of various safety features during a crash. And since each member of your family differs in size, weight, and movement, each crash test dummy is shaped differently as well. NHTSA's family of dummies ranges from newborn infants to 10-year-old children to small females and average males. NHTSA also is involved in worldwide development and evaluation of crash test dummies even more advanced than those we use now.

Design, instrumentation, and testing with these crash test dummies help ensure the safety of your family in the unfortunate event that a crash occurs by encouraging safety improvements to vehicles to provide better occupant protection.