RUCKERSVILLE, Va. — If you've ever checked the safety rating of a vehicle, you're probably familiar with the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).
If not, you've likely heard it in a commercial when automakers say the vehicle is an IIHS Top Safety Pick.
Representatives with IIHS describe the organization as an independent, nonprofit scientific and educational organization dedicated to reducing deaths, injuries, and property damage from motor vehicle crashes through research and evaluation and through education of consumers, policymakers, and safety professionals.
It's a standard that's recognized across the world and its facility is located in Central Virginia.
I made the three-hour drive from Norfolk to Ruckersville to see what research is being done and how the findings help shape consumer decisions and the auto industry.
Norfolk
Norfolk wants to eliminate all traffic fatalities. Here's how.
While I was there, I met Raul Arbelaez, the vice president of the Vehicle Research Center.
As we walked through the lobby he told me, “This facility is where we conduct our physical testing of vehicles and evaluation.”
Through that evaluation and research, IIHS has a goal to reduce deaths, injuries, and property damage from vehicle crashes.
I asked Arbelaez if he believes that they have achieved that goal and if he could discuss the biggest changes in the auto industry over the past 25 years.
“Certainly vehicles have gotten a lot safer. The structures overall have gotten more robust. We don’t have occupant compartments in front crashes or side crashes, or even in rollovers collapsing around occupants the way that they did 30 years ago," he said. "We have better seatbelts and airbags and really what we've seen in the last few years are crash avoidance technologies that help prevent crashes in the first place.”
But accidents happen, so vehicles are crash-tested twice a week, showing how they respond and how protected passengers are. If it does well, it gets a good rating. If it does poorly, it stands out on the chart.
“We believe that consumers are using [the vehicle ratings] to pick the safest vehicles out there,” he says.
Arbelaez says that has impacted the auto market over the years.
“Those manufacturers are really motivated to improve their structures, get better side airbags [and] get better technology in the vehicle,” he says.
Consumer
Is your personal property tax bill higher? You're not the only one.
Arbelaez also showed me the lab dedicated to the test dummies where any repairs or calibrations happen. The dummies come in varied sizes to represent adults and children and how their bodies would react in a crash. One model even has a segmented spine, so it’s designed to move in a human-like manner.
The different models, which can cost about $250,000 each, have head-to-toe sensors and systems that record the data from a crash test.
Before coming to the facility, I had no idea how much prep work went into getting the vehicles ready for the crash. I watched as engineers pinpointed exact measurements on where the dummy sits.
They also painted the model’s face and body parts so when the vehicle crashes, there’s color documentation on where their body hit.
“A crash test is something where we try to follow a procedure so that if we have to repeat the test, or if an auto manufacturer has conducted the test in their own lab, we want to know that everyone is conducting it in the same exact way," he says. "That gets down to positioning the dummies to the millimeter exactly from one lab to another."
After the vehicles are evaluated, they are turned into ratings.
With all of that information, their hope is that automakers make safer vehicles.
“People driving every day don't realize the amount of work that goes into designing a safe vehicle,” Arbelaez says.
