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The Oddly Dark History of Crash Test Dummies (Not The Band) · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
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Speaker 1: the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
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Speaker 1: for tuning in. We're gonna do a little bit of
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Speaker 1: an automobile. Well, yeah, that was my my crash car
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Speaker 1: crash mouth sound. Did you like it? Yeah? I liked it? Also,
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Speaker 1: it was it was like a test of a car
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Speaker 1: crash maybe right perhaps? Yeah, I'm no dummy, and neither
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Speaker 1: are any of you. Ben Boland and then the super
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Speaker 1: producer Maximus to the maximum, at least not yet, our
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Speaker 1: super producer, mister Max Williams. Yes, still stuck around because
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Speaker 1: he has egregiously weird taste and friends. You are Noel,
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Speaker 1: I am Ben, And today we are talking about crash test.
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Speaker 1: We're talking about cars. It's it's nuts, man, cars are
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Speaker 1: nol I might be a little more into cars than
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Speaker 1: you are. But I love him, dude, and I know
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Speaker 1: you love him. You just took a road trip recently. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I like driving him. They get me where I'm gone.
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Speaker 1: Oh anyway, so wait, we're not doing the whole episode
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Speaker 1: about that Walls. There was this kid wouldn't go to
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Speaker 1: school when Yeah, we're not doing that one. We're not
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Speaker 1: doing that one, but we I think we got past
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Speaker 1: our legal department with that impression, so we should be
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Speaker 1: good to go look up the band crash test Dummies epic.
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Speaker 1: They are referencing a thing that happens in the real world,
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Speaker 1: which is when auto manufacturers, for many years and in
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Speaker 1: the current day, when auto manufacturers are trying to full
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Speaker 1: proof their products, their cars, they build out human shaped mannequins, right,
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Speaker 1: and those are meant to provide invaluable, potentially life saving
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Speaker 1: data about what happens if something goes wrong, if a
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Speaker 1: car gets into crash. How does the airbag work? What
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Speaker 1: about the three point seat belt? How do we save lives?
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Speaker 1: That's what they're trying to ask. That's right. And weirdly, this,
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Speaker 1: these these things, these life saving creations spawned kind of
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Speaker 1: a weird pop cultural moment. Like in the nineties, action figures,
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Speaker 1: action figures or the head would pop up like rockham
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Speaker 1: sotock'em Robots had a cartoon show. There was I think
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Speaker 1: it was the cartoon came first and then the actions
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Speaker 1: figures were based around the cartoon like often as the case.
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Speaker 1: But yeah, they were designed. Their heads are they're bald
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Speaker 1: and they have these kind of like targety looking things
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Speaker 1: on their heads, and what an odd thing. I don't
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Speaker 1: think it really lasted very long. That's why I said moment.
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Speaker 1: But I had some of those figures and they were
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Speaker 1: placed sets he could get where you could like simulate
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Speaker 1: the crashes and all and they break apart. That's right.
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Speaker 1: I thought it was the coolest part. There was a
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Speaker 1: button their arms and legs. Yeah, yeah, so you could
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Speaker 1: test your crash as a child. But the thing is,
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Speaker 1: we have to understand that for a lot of people,
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Speaker 1: a lot of our fellow ridiculous historians in the United States,
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Speaker 1: the automobile in the post World War two era represented
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Speaker 1: an unprecedented amount of freedom, right, yeah, and I represented
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Speaker 1: a death trap of sorts. Before the advent of some
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Speaker 1: of these technological vancements at auto safety they were going
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Speaker 1: to talk about today. One, there was an active and
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Speaker 1: arguably continuing conspiracy on the part of automotive companies and
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Speaker 1: people who have money in them to make sure that
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Speaker 1: the American public was consumed with the benefits of that mobility.
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Speaker 1: And we're not thinking about the consequences of putting just
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Speaker 1: anyone behind the wheel if they got a little driver's license,
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Speaker 1: automobiles and this is per a great article in the Smithsonian.
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Speaker 1: Automobiles placed speed and power in the hands of individuals,
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Speaker 1: and as a result, during the dawn of the automobile.
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Speaker 1: And I say this as a guy who my first
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Speaker 1: show was all about cars. It was called car stuff.
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Speaker 1: Everything that floats, fly, swims or drives. Automobiles led to
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Speaker 1: a huge like an epidemic we could call it, of
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Speaker 1: traffic and injuries. And then to your point, Noel, people
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Speaker 1: started asking, well, what about the drivers. How do we
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Speaker 1: establish guidelines for the behavior of all these drivers? How
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Speaker 1: do we design better automobiles, How do we make better roads?
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Speaker 1: How do we get around traffic hazards? And this comes
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Speaker 1: to the world of safety measures. And when people started
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Speaker 1: talking about safety measures, well they started doing crash tests.
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Speaker 1: And we're not talking about the divisive film Crash with
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Speaker 1: James Spader, yeah, or the other devisive film Crash that
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Speaker 1: won all the Oscars and is now largely considered trash,
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Speaker 1: starring Matt Dillon and a bunch of others. Ben I
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Speaker 1: just was looking this up because the question popped into
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Speaker 1: my head when we're driver's licenses required, And it wasn't
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Speaker 1: until nineteen thirty four, and the Model T was invented
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Speaker 1: in like nine thirteen or no, nineteen o eight. That's
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Speaker 1: a big old gap. So there was a period where
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Speaker 1: it was like anybody could just hop into one of
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Speaker 1: these things and go to town literally or figuratively. Yeah
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Speaker 1: they didn't. I like that. I think you got poetic
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Speaker 1: at the end of the sentence. I like that because
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Speaker 1: you know, the technology, like any other emergent technology, was
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Speaker 1: not super common for a time. These things really were
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Speaker 1: called horseless carriages. Today, we're going to talk about how
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Speaker 1: auto manufacturers caught onto the idea of putting human shaped
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Speaker 1: things into their own vehicles and then wrecking those vehicles
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Speaker 1: to see what would happen. So here we go. It's
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Speaker 1: the dawn of the twentieth century, right, mass market automobiles
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Speaker 1: are a thing. Henry Ford is making a lot of money,
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Speaker 1: and he's definitely definitely supportive of the ideals that will
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Speaker 1: later launch the Nazi Party in Germany. Just to give
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Speaker 1: you a sense of the lay of the land. Yeah, cool, cool,
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Speaker 1: Those are like his two things, cars and anti semitism
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Speaker 1: and not safety. That was not his third thing. Well,
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Speaker 1: he's the type, dude, He's the type to be very opinionated,
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Speaker 1: and you couldn't nay say Henry Ford, these are two
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Speaker 1: true stories. He did one day say you can have
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Speaker 1: any version of my car you want, so long as
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Speaker 1: it is painted black. You can have any color car
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Speaker 1: you want, so long as it's painted black. And then
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Speaker 1: one time his own engineers built a prototype that improved
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Speaker 1: upon the Model T and he ripped it apart with
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Speaker 1: his bare hands in front of them. Super forward thinking fellow.
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Speaker 1: I mean, look, obviously he was a forward thinking fellow.
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Speaker 1: But sometimes folks like that can kind of get in
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Speaker 1: their own way or their forward thinking like once and
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Speaker 1: then they just can't see the forest for the trees
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Speaker 1: in terms of like other people's input, and history is
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Speaker 1: full of folks like that, and Henry Ford was definitely
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Speaker 1: one of them. Ben, I love your point about you
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Speaker 1: can only have you can have whatever kind of car
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Speaker 1: you want, as long as painted black. It really wasn't
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Speaker 1: until much later that choice in automobiles even became a
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Speaker 1: thing in terms of it being like a stylistic choice
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Speaker 1: like I want a red one, or I want this
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Speaker 1: or that or the other. That was a much later
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Speaker 1: kind of innovation. Actually, if I can jump in here,
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Speaker 1: real quick. We have an Ephederal episode about that. Somewhat
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Speaker 1: is our trash episode where it's people realize, oh, if
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Speaker 1: we sell things in multiple different colors and cars as well.
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Speaker 1: In the examples that our casts had and the reason
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Speaker 1: why it's like, okay, you sell them a different colors,
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Speaker 1: people will buy them more because it's seasonal maybe even right, oh,
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Speaker 1: this is the hot new one for this season, and
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Speaker 1: that means they become more disposable where you got to
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Speaker 1: get the newest and hottest one. And then they started
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Speaker 1: making little tweaks to designs that kind of encourage people
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Speaker 1: to want to keep up with the Joneses or Smiths
9:09
Speaker 1: or whomever, whatever last name do please check out Ephemeral.
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Speaker 1: I think it's a it's a podcast that, in full transparency,
9:16
Speaker 1: all of us have participated in. Max and his brother
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Speaker 1: Alex are some of the masterminds of that show, and
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Speaker 1: I think it's something we're all very very proud of
9:26
Speaker 1: for good reason. By the way, and so anyway, here
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Speaker 1: we are automobiles. They're faster than horse drawn carriages. They're
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Speaker 1: faster than a bicycle. They're also, by the way, I
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Speaker 1: should say to the earlier point about Henry Ford, He
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Speaker 1: did not invent the automobile. He revolutionized the assembly line,
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Speaker 1: and that's he did so much other weird stuff. Check
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Speaker 1: out the car Stuff episode about Ford Landia. It's nuts.
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Speaker 1: It's like a three part series. Anyway, what I'm saying
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Speaker 1: is Max beat me here this guy. Yeah, I mean,
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Speaker 1: it's just true of a lot of folks of that stature,
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Speaker 1: like Elon Musk likes people to think that he invented
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Speaker 1: Tesla's but that is not the case. Nor did he
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Speaker 1: invent PayPal, nor did he invent Twitter. But he you know,
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Speaker 1: guys like that kind of write the history books to
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Speaker 1: a certain degree. So people associate Henry Ford with inventing
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Speaker 1: the automobile. And to your point, then that's just not true. Yeah, yeah,
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Speaker 1: you raise, It's just not the case, which is not
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Speaker 1: to take away from what he did for the automotive
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Speaker 1: culture in the United States. Thank god, that was one
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Speaker 1: of his two upset. That was the one of his
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Speaker 1: two obsessions that caught on. So all the people who
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Speaker 1: are watching these safety problems, they say, it really goes
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Speaker 1: down to our drivers. How competent are our drivers? Their
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Speaker 1: behavior determines whether an automobile is an efficient A to
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Speaker 1: B or to zed kind of thing or whether it
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Speaker 1: is a menace. And you know, look, these people were
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Speaker 1: not calling them dumb. These people were coming from a
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Speaker 1: world where one of the fastest ways to get around
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Speaker 1: on your own where you're driving would be a horse.
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Speaker 1: And if the horse doesn't like the vibe, the horse
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Speaker 1: is not going to keep going. The horse is like
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Speaker 1: a check and balance thing here. And if you don't
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Speaker 1: have that horse, you just have way for it horsepower.
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Speaker 1: I will take the womp womp on that max you
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Speaker 1: you shall have it to my friend. And horses also,
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Speaker 1: last I check don't drink alcohol for fun. So you know,
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Speaker 1: I mean, maybe there might be others. I'm just saying
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Speaker 1: people are fallible. People are inherently I mean not to
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Speaker 1: say the horses are like geniuses or anything, but they
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Speaker 1: kind of do the one thing and they kind of
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Speaker 1: do it well, you know what I mean. And by
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Speaker 1: a large they are teetotlers. So know what you're saying
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Speaker 1: is that they are a one trick pony, yeah, or
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Speaker 1: a one trick mayor or a one trick Philly, whichever
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Speaker 1: one you got. But again they do and you know,
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Speaker 1: horse technology hasn't really changed. You got your blinders that
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Speaker 1: just kind of make them go straight and not get distracted.
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Speaker 1: And with things like that you can kind of mitigate
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Speaker 1: the horse getting spooked and all of that and that
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Speaker 1: stuff short of like a bad tempered horse pretty predictable.
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Speaker 1: But people when given that power, oh that power, that
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Speaker 1: pedal to the metal, not as predictable. This is also
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Speaker 1: you know, there's a great point to be made about
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Speaker 1: how the horses did not necessarily consent to this. Hell no,
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Speaker 1: and they were not paid. The thing is there there's
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Speaker 1: this vast you could call it a conspiracy. We might
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Speaker 1: touch on it later. There's this vast movement amidst automobile
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Speaker 1: manufacturers to put the onus of safety and the consequences
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Speaker 1: of lack of safety all the individual drivers, not on
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Speaker 1: how the cars are designed. Automobile ownership becomes increasingly common
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Speaker 1: in the nineteen tens the nineteen twenties, and we begin
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Speaker 1: to see this emergent safety advocacy culture. You know, people
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Speaker 1: are saying, look, if you're driving a car, you're endangering yourself.
13:28
Speaker 1: And I love that point about people who are driving
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Speaker 1: inebriated nol. You're also in endangering the rest of the community,
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Speaker 1: who is just probably walking around. There's the National Safety
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Speaker 1: Council that comes about. Then they're focusing on the human
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Speaker 1: factor in automobile accidents. You see the emergence of things
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Speaker 1: called safety leagues, and they do pr campaigns. No, i'd
13:55
Speaker 1: like you hear cars for kids jingles these days about
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Speaker 1: donating your car. Yeah, they're not choice for to cars
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Speaker 1: for kids, stuff like that. Yeah, these campaigns took the
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Speaker 1: place of that, and they were attempting to make both
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Speaker 1: drivers and pedestrians people walking paying more attention in traffic.
14:16
Speaker 1: The federal government is throwing money at state and local
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Speaker 1: governments to try to get everybody on the same the
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Speaker 1: same broad page about traffic laws, law enforcement. You know,
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Speaker 1: they were saying, look, if you drive one way in
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Speaker 1: Los Angeles, you should have relatively similar laws in New
14:38
Speaker 1: York City. Right, And to your earlier point about emergent technology,
14:41
Speaker 1: which is totally what this is moving at such a
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Speaker 1: fast pace. It's a pace that far exceeds the pace
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Speaker 1: of government. And it happens every time, you know, with
14:51
Speaker 1: regulations like surrounding the Internet, for example, and all of
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Speaker 1: that always lags the government response. And we're literally talking
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Speaker 1: about a new technology that requires a vast infrastructure overhaul,
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Speaker 1: you know, of roads and bridges and all of these
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Speaker 1: things that did not necessarily need to be a certain way.
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Speaker 1: With just horses, you know, you could have these dirt
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Speaker 1: roads and all of that stuff, and you know, narrow
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Speaker 1: lanes and probably wouldn't end up with with massive numbers
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Speaker 1: of fatalities. But once cars get introduced, that stuff isn't
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Speaker 1: gonna fly anymore. Yes, it's not. It's gonna it's gonna drive.
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Speaker 1: So z z zip stops up. We actually like improv
15:33
Speaker 1: here aspers. Oh sorry, my cat's knocking some stuff over.
15:37
Speaker 1: Uh and is doctor excuse me, excuse me? Document? Yeah,
15:41
Speaker 1: doctor Vakman also apparently a shareholder in some of these
15:45
Speaker 1: places we're about to talk smack about. So keep it
15:48
Speaker 1: all in nex So. You see things where manufacturers of
15:52
Speaker 1: autos are attempting to put the blame on anybody but
15:58
Speaker 1: themselves for little bit. And one of those is some
16:01
Speaker 1: one instance of that is something Noel, you and I
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Speaker 1: talked about, which is the idea of jaywalking. I think
16:08
Speaker 1: we mentioned this on stuff they don't want, you know,
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Speaker 1: I definitely did on a car stuff. But what is jaywalking? Noel?
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Speaker 1: H Well, I mean it's it's it's essentially crossing the
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Speaker 1: street illegally. That's what it's become. But it really more
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Speaker 1: referred to kind of just the culture of walking in general,
16:27
Speaker 1: of pedestrians, and it was sort of like a term
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Speaker 1: of abuse. And the idea was to malign the humble
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Speaker 1: pedestrian in favor of getting them out of the way
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Speaker 1: of automobiles and moving more towards a highway and byway
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Speaker 1: based system of travel. Bro you nailed it, absolutely, one
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Speaker 1: hundred percent. Just so the idea there was to put
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Speaker 1: the blame on people who are, as you said, just walking.
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Speaker 1: And and Max, who is our research associate for today's episode,
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Speaker 1: Max came with the facts. Yeah, we're gonna do it
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Speaker 1: right now. Okay, aw Saxon Moose with the facts and Moose,
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Speaker 1: so Max found this this great comment, this great observation
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Speaker 1: that Americans, people in the United States, were slow to
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Speaker 1: understand the importance of redesigning the automobile itself. Stopped blaming
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Speaker 1: the victim, stopped blaming that pedestrian, try to make better cars.
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Speaker 1: And by the late nineteen twenties manufacturers finally admitted, oh,
17:56
Speaker 1: maybe we could build a better car. And they they said, oh, okay,
18:00
Speaker 1: let's make windshields that don't shatter as dangerously as quickly.
18:05
Speaker 1: Let's maybe put brakes on all the wheels instead of
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Speaker 1: just like two, and you know, maybe we can build better,
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Speaker 1: better systems all around. And then they said, oh, also
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Speaker 1: we can sell it. We'll be selling the safer cars.
18:24
Speaker 1: And they still do that to this day. You know,
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Speaker 1: stats like that about you know, rollover rates and whatever
18:31
Speaker 1: what have you. And certain cars like Jeeps for example,
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Speaker 1: our land Rovers do kind of get a bad rap
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Speaker 1: for some of that safety stuff because they do roll
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Speaker 1: over more easily. But yeah, I mean, safety even now
18:42
Speaker 1: is a big thing for family cars. You're dreaded Honda
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Speaker 1: Odyssey for example, very safe, you know, for those inside,
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Speaker 1: not necessarily for the enemies of Honda odyssees. I know what, Okay,
18:57
Speaker 1: I'll play your Ranger games. Isn't that the car that
19:01
Speaker 1: has been fine? I do not care for them. Yeah, okay,
19:05
Speaker 1: do you don't have a Honda Hodyssey? Right? No you
19:07
Speaker 1: do not. No, it's okay, you're you're good. Oh geez, sorry,
19:13
Speaker 1: just my heart just jumped in my chest. I don't
19:15
Speaker 1: know how much of that pause. We're kinda we're gonna
19:18
Speaker 1: ed it out. But but yeah, yeah, as Noel knows well,
19:24
Speaker 1: I feel the way about Honda odyssees that you feel
19:27
Speaker 1: about birds. Yeah, I respect their right to exist. I
19:32
Speaker 1: should say whatever far beyond I'm just laught. Birds aren't real, man,
19:38
Speaker 1: and on Honda Odyssey's unfortunately, are very real, painfully real.
19:42
Speaker 1: They'll find you. Yeah. Anyway, so far before the Honda Odyssey,
19:48
Speaker 1: far before the Honda company gets into manufacturing troublesome mini vans,
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Speaker 1: we see that automakers wanted future customers to know that
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Speaker 1: their cars were safe, and they said, look, we're improving
20:05
Speaker 1: roads where licensing drivers were regulating traffic. That's really what's
20:10
Speaker 1: going to stop accidents from happening. We're putting in seat belts.
20:15
Speaker 1: There's a guy named Neil's Bullet no relation. His last
20:18
Speaker 1: name is spelled b O h l I N who
20:21
Speaker 1: probably saved more than one billion lives with his Yeah,
20:26
Speaker 1: with his seat belt innovation. So that's a great stat
20:31
Speaker 1: have under your belt there yea belt. Also that you're
20:36
Speaker 1: on fire today. So they added these things or they
20:41
Speaker 1: knew they would be around, but for a lot of
20:43
Speaker 1: the time these weren't in your typical mass market cars. Instead,
20:48
Speaker 1: they decided they, being the auto manufacturers, they decided to
20:54
Speaker 1: throw bodies at the problems. And they started their old bodies, right,
20:58
Speaker 1: and they dead bodies for a while. Or I remembered
21:04
Speaker 1: that from a past conversation and probably from that car
21:07
Speaker 1: stuff episode. But I'm like, is that true? That is macaw?
21:10
Speaker 1: But yeah, man, oh true, it gets you. You got it, man,
21:15
Speaker 1: Let's let's let's get there. Let's take the long way,
21:18
Speaker 1: you know, let's take the surface street rather than the interstate.
21:22
Speaker 1: The first crash test were done on unoccupied vehicles. How
21:28
Speaker 1: did that even work? Yeah, it seems like that would
21:31
Speaker 1: favor the manufacturer more than the consumer maybe you know
21:35
Speaker 1: what I mean, like making them more durable or something.
21:38
Speaker 1: But actually they wouldn't want them to be more durable
21:39
Speaker 1: with they they want people to buy new ones. But yeah,
21:41
Speaker 1: I'm a little perplexed as to how they thought this
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Speaker 1: was a great idea and how they would measure success,
21:47
Speaker 1: you know, in these tests. Yeah, and it kind of
21:50
Speaker 1: build off that. I know. One of the safety features
21:53
Speaker 1: they really marketed early on was all steel frames, because
21:58
Speaker 1: like when like test like this and all still frame
22:00
Speaker 1: got in an accident, it'd be like, oh, look there's
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Speaker 1: no damage there. But the problem with those was it
22:05
Speaker 1: basically just like it was like putting humans into it
22:08
Speaker 1: like a shaker, just shaking them up, and so like,
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Speaker 1: yeah to pure portnel, I don't I don't see how
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Speaker 1: this would do anything testing them. You just see, Oh
22:17
Speaker 1: the car can survive that impact, but no idea on
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Speaker 1: how the people inside would do. Yeah, And they seem
22:23
Speaker 1: to have realized that relatively quickly. Uh, and then they
22:26
Speaker 1: pivoted right. Yeah. In their in their early days, auto
22:32
Speaker 1: manufacturers would conduct crash testing by literally having some guy
22:38
Speaker 1: sit in the driver's seat, shotgun the thing, and then
22:43
Speaker 1: jump out of the moving car, you know, and do
22:45
Speaker 1: a very cool, like evil knevil stunt. They roll away
22:49
Speaker 1: right before it hit. Well, I hope when that that
22:51
Speaker 1: method stopped being the thing that that person at least
22:55
Speaker 1: got good work as a stunt driver in them into
22:57
Speaker 1: movies quite possibly. And you know, that's a great story
23:01
Speaker 1: for a future episode if we can find them. Let
23:04
Speaker 1: us know. Ridiculous historians eventually though, they say, look, we
23:08
Speaker 1: need a body in the car. We need the bodies
23:11
Speaker 1: to hit the wall. So they started using in the
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Speaker 1: floor perhaps right. They used primates, they used bears, and yeah,
23:23
Speaker 1: it's just it's it's it's horrible. I mean, these weren't alive,
23:27
Speaker 1: were they? These Barren steambarns. It's like the worst Barren
23:31
Speaker 1: Steam Bears book or bearn Stain Bears book. Ever, I
23:35
Speaker 1: think the bears were alive. Man. They also used pigs.
23:38
Speaker 1: How they wrangle them? Do they like sedate them or something?
23:42
Speaker 1: I would imagine? So bears are pretty clever. Yeah, I'll
23:45
Speaker 1: always be getting those picnic baskets, you know, um And
23:49
Speaker 1: you know, to to that point, Ben primates pigs, bears
23:53
Speaker 1: similar organ matrix, let's just say, layout to the human form. Yeah,
24:00
Speaker 1: the thoracic and abdominal organ structure, and pigs especially similar
24:04
Speaker 1: to humans. So while they were testing on these living creatures,
24:09
Speaker 1: they said, all right, let's be honest, it's not bears
24:15
Speaker 1: driving these cars. Not to be terrifying. Can you imagine bears,
24:21
Speaker 1: cocaine bears perhaps driving around willy nilly and automobiles and
24:26
Speaker 1: can you imagine one driving a Honda Odyssey. That's the
24:29
Speaker 1: still I can't. Oh, I just spooked myself. I'm telling you,
24:35
Speaker 1: who can leave this whole positive? I love it. It's
24:38
Speaker 1: triggering for you that who hurt you Ben who I
24:41
Speaker 1: think I've heard the story. It's been a long time.
24:43
Speaker 1: But the Honda Odyssey. Yeah, they're out there even now.
24:48
Speaker 1: One may be heading towards you. So the thing is
24:53
Speaker 1: they realized quickly, Okay, using live mammals is all right,
25:00
Speaker 1: but it's not getting us all the way there. We
25:04
Speaker 1: need a better solution. So in the nineteen forties, the
25:09
Speaker 1: history of crash test dummies begins. It comes from Uncle Sam,
25:13
Speaker 1: it comes from the Air Force. They were testing these
25:17
Speaker 1: mannequins in ejection seats. We do not know whether they
25:23
Speaker 1: were shooting off bears in ejection seats first, but i'd
25:29
Speaker 1: be a story. It'd be a story, good origin for
25:32
Speaker 1: cocaine bear. The first dummy so far as we know,
25:35
Speaker 1: was created by Sierra Engineering Company and Alderson Research Laboratories,
25:41
Speaker 1: named after the founder, Sam Alderson, and they gave their
25:47
Speaker 1: first dummy a name Sierra Sam. Ah Yes, yes, Sam,
25:52
Speaker 1: sounds like a real cow poke. In nineteen sixty eight,
25:56
Speaker 1: Alderson debuted that design in like a public kind of display,
26:01
Speaker 1: right UM is specifically you know of automotive crash testing UM.
26:07
Speaker 1: It was known as the the VIP, which does not
26:12
Speaker 1: stand for a very important person in this case stands
26:14
Speaker 1: for vehicular impact personnel. Now VIP was around as an
26:21
Speaker 1: acronym and initialism by about nineteen thirty three. It wasn't
26:26
Speaker 1: common until after World War Two, but just so everybody knows,
26:30
Speaker 1: they were having a bit of a nod and a
26:32
Speaker 1: wink there at the idea of VIP. Yeah, and now
26:36
Speaker 1: we could there's another steel cage involved here, and this
26:39
Speaker 1: is to simulate the human rib cage. They had a
26:41
Speaker 1: steel rib cage articulated joints like you might see in
26:45
Speaker 1: like a puppet, you know, um, like a even like
26:49
Speaker 1: a stop motion puppet. Or they have those armatures, those
26:51
Speaker 1: metal armatures that can be you know, flexed and all
26:53
Speaker 1: of that stuff, uh, speaking of flexing, a flexible neck
26:57
Speaker 1: and other cavities that were design trying to hold measurement tools. Yeah.
27:03
Speaker 1: The idea was, according to the American Physical Society, that
27:08
Speaker 1: one could mimic the acceleration and weight distribution of what
27:13
Speaker 1: they considered to be an average male. They later expanded
27:18
Speaker 1: and they said, well what about bigger people? You know,
27:21
Speaker 1: what about people who have a larger height or a
27:25
Speaker 1: little more weight to them. And then they said at
27:28
Speaker 1: some point, oh, yeah, what about women very late in
27:32
Speaker 1: the game. Women, what are those? Said the engineer, exactly exactly.
27:40
Speaker 1: And up until the seventies, these crash test dummies were
27:43
Speaker 1: built and designed by third party, non governmental companies, and
27:50
Speaker 1: that all kind of took a turn when General Motors
27:54
Speaker 1: decided that they wanted to internalize these processes because they
27:59
Speaker 1: didn't think the folks that we're building these were doing
28:00
Speaker 1: a good enough job, which is kind of cool because
28:04
Speaker 1: they were taking it upon themselves too to make improvements
28:08
Speaker 1: to these processes, presumably to increase their safety. But again,
28:14
Speaker 1: safety also is now a selling point, so it's not
28:18
Speaker 1: all benevolent here, you know, it's like they that becomes
28:21
Speaker 1: a competitive edge if you have the safest car, because
28:25
Speaker 1: this is in the era of like consumer reports and
28:27
Speaker 1: you know a lot of that kind of stuff where
28:29
Speaker 1: people are getting a little wiser to these sorts of things,
28:31
Speaker 1: you know, and and insist on safety for their families
28:35
Speaker 1: things like that. And by the way, a lot of
28:37
Speaker 1: this is coming to us from the history of crash
28:40
Speaker 1: test dummies over AAA by Andrew Sheldon, and this is
28:45
Speaker 1: pretty recent. This came out about a year ago. Is
28:48
Speaker 1: that would that be triple A that like the car club. Okay, yeah,
28:53
Speaker 1: if everybody's typing it out though, three a's uh. The
28:57
Speaker 1: second A leads you to the other problem we were
29:00
Speaker 1: talking about earlier, which is alcoholism and cars. So the
29:05
Speaker 1: Hybrid two comes out in nineteen seventy two, and this
29:09
Speaker 1: is an improvement, right, It's the same thing, but a
29:13
Speaker 1: little bit better, a little more nuanced understanding of human anatomy.
29:17
Speaker 1: It also provides consistent crash results. Mainly, they want to
29:22
Speaker 1: test seat belts. They want to figure out how we
29:27
Speaker 1: can understand what happens to the head, the neck, the
29:30
Speaker 1: limbs across all, you know, sort of human shapes. So
29:34
Speaker 1: they're trying to be inclusive of different sizes, different genders,
29:39
Speaker 1: different ages and so on. You know, obviously a six
29:43
Speaker 1: foot three in eighty seven year old dude is not
29:49
Speaker 1: going to react to the crash the same way that
29:52
Speaker 1: I don't know a six year old girl would. Well,
29:54
Speaker 1: and I think, you know, back to the crash test dummies.
29:57
Speaker 1: Cartoon and action figures played into that because they were
30:02
Speaker 1: like kid ones and like old lady, you know, they're
30:04
Speaker 1: all the different ones, and that gave them their kind
30:06
Speaker 1: of cast of characters. So that followed from this change
30:10
Speaker 1: this diversification in the actual crash test dummies themselves for sure,
30:15
Speaker 1: and GM has a third hybrid anniverse to creativity. They
30:21
Speaker 1: call it the Hybrid three, and it has forty one
30:25
Speaker 1: separate data channels. The Hybrid two, by way of contrast,
30:30
Speaker 1: had about eight, so researchers could measure precise injuries to
30:36
Speaker 1: different parts different week points in the human body. And
30:41
Speaker 1: originally the Hybrid three was supposed to impersonate an average male.
30:47
Speaker 1: In the eighties, they started including what they called large
30:51
Speaker 1: males and small female dummies. Nineteen eighty four they introduce
30:57
Speaker 1: child models, little tiny like Hawaii versions of crash test dummies.
31:04
Speaker 1: But as we have been teasing for most of this episode,
31:10
Speaker 1: eventually they decided to go past the imitations and stick
31:15
Speaker 1: with some original bodies for testing. Like I said, I
31:25
Speaker 1: kind of thought that maybe I had made that up
31:27
Speaker 1: in my sick imagination, but not the case. They get
31:32
Speaker 1: to a point where they're like, like you said, well,
31:34
Speaker 1: nothing's really better than the real thing, kind of like
31:36
Speaker 1: the way they made you like dissect fetle pigs and
31:38
Speaker 1: cats in high school despite any misgivings. Actually, you could
31:44
Speaker 1: probably have opted out of that. I bet if you
31:45
Speaker 1: got a note or if it was like for religious
31:47
Speaker 1: reasons perhaps, but maybe nowadays nowadays, but back then it
31:51
Speaker 1: was you get chastised. The website Ethics Unwrapped, which is
31:55
Speaker 1: a service from the University of Texas's Macombs School of Business,
32:00
Speaker 1: actually has a case study on this, uh and it's
32:05
Speaker 1: entitled Cadavers in Car Safety Research, And here's a little
32:09
Speaker 1: little snippet. In nineteen ninety three was widely disclosed that
32:12
Speaker 1: research engineers at Heidelberg University in Germany had used two
32:16
Speaker 1: hundred adult and child cadavers in simulated car tests. The
32:21
Speaker 1: researchers argued that the use of human cadavers was necessary
32:24
Speaker 1: to study the actual effects of these crashes on the body.
32:27
Speaker 1: They insisted that the research would save lives because it
32:29
Speaker 1: would help engineers design safer cars. And as we know,
32:33
Speaker 1: you know, Germans are known for their engineering prowess and
32:37
Speaker 1: they're you know, manufacturing, and German cars are some of
32:40
Speaker 1: the best out there. So I would argue they probably
32:43
Speaker 1: were right. But it's a really bad pr look, isn't it.
32:48
Speaker 1: I think? Was it? Was? It like a big kerfuffle
32:52
Speaker 1: came out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was not a good look.
32:55
Speaker 1: I mean, using cadavers in this way. It wasn't something
33:00
Speaker 1: they made out out a whole cloth. It's not a
33:03
Speaker 1: new thing, and it's still not gone completely since the
33:08
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, back when researchers at Wayne State University were
33:13
Speaker 1: throwing bodies down elevator shafts. Every part of a car
33:18
Speaker 1: touching on safety benefited in some way from testing with cadavers.
33:26
Speaker 1: We see that Ford, for instance, everybody knows Ford, and
33:31
Speaker 1: they are good cars. Look, I dunked on Henry Ford.
33:35
Speaker 1: I have dunked on Henry Ford for many years. I
33:38
Speaker 1: drive a Ford Escape right now and it's a pretty
33:40
Speaker 1: good car. Well, I got a good deal whatever, fair enough,
33:44
Speaker 1: fair enough. So this company was promoting what they called
33:50
Speaker 1: their inflatable rear seat belts in the twenty eleven Explorer,
33:55
Speaker 1: and the Explorer for anybody playing along at home, is
33:58
Speaker 1: nicer than the Escape. I'm that cheap. So Ford says,
34:03
Speaker 1: this gives you five times the protection of the conventional
34:06
Speaker 1: seat belt. But if you look at their promo and
34:12
Speaker 1: their pr and stuff, you'll see that they don't really
34:17
Speaker 1: like to publicize the fact that dead bodies were used
34:23
Speaker 1: in the development of that seat belt. Yeah, no, it's
34:26
Speaker 1: it's definitely not something you come right out and at advertise.
34:29
Speaker 1: But here here's the perspective from pre Prasade as a
34:32
Speaker 1: former chief safety researcher at Ford on this very subject, saying,
34:37
Speaker 1: it's still very important. Even though we have very good
34:40
Speaker 1: math modeling of dummies, human modeling hasn't reached that state yet,
34:45
Speaker 1: meaning there's still not the modeling is still inferior to
34:50
Speaker 1: using the cadavers. Yeah, there's not a way yet to
34:56
Speaker 1: run moulation. I get that, that makes sense. So now,
35:00
Speaker 1: of course this is something that publicly, at the very
35:04
Speaker 1: least automakers kind of want to stay away from because
35:07
Speaker 1: it is such a pr nightmare. A Swedish researcher in
35:10
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight told the Express in newspaper that
35:13
Speaker 1: General Motors and Saab we're using cadavers in research, and
35:17
Speaker 1: the companies denied it. Yeah, and it seems like they're
35:22
Speaker 1: legit there because they don't have the resources, the infrastructure
35:27
Speaker 1: that you would need to conduct a successful crash test
35:31
Speaker 1: with a cadaver. But you know who does a lot
35:34
Speaker 1: of your favorite universities, the old NHTSA, the National Highway
35:41
Speaker 1: Traffic Safety Administration. Right now, as you are hearing this
35:45
Speaker 1: if you listen. In the United States, they are funding
35:49
Speaker 1: multiple cadaver test per year and some of those schools
35:54
Speaker 1: also get funding from automakers. Yeah, and this kind of
36:01
Speaker 1: makes me think of like the red market kind of
36:04
Speaker 1: stuff that we've talked about, and stuff they don't want
36:05
Speaker 1: you to know, our body brokers, you know, and all
36:07
Speaker 1: of that. That's much more of us stuff they don't
36:09
Speaker 1: want you to know. Topic that we've covered in various iterations.
36:13
Speaker 1: But it's like, who are these bodies? Right? Unclaimed John
36:18
Speaker 1: or Jane? Does is just the term it's used for,
36:21
Speaker 1: you know, unidentified bodies that are found? Is that is
36:23
Speaker 1: that right? Or people that are maybe donated their bodies
36:25
Speaker 1: to science. People who donate their bodies to science and
36:31
Speaker 1: don't have a clear understanding of how that body would
36:35
Speaker 1: be used. You might think it's being used in cancer
36:38
Speaker 1: research or something like that, not knowing that it is
36:42
Speaker 1: just stuffed into a Honda Odyssey and driven into wall. Oh.
36:48
Speaker 1: The humanity, the humanity of it all gotta feel not
36:54
Speaker 1: great by the way, too, for whoever has to clean
36:57
Speaker 1: these experiments up? True, and also we have to ask,
37:01
Speaker 1: is there a greater good argument if you are if
37:05
Speaker 1: you are donating your body to science and your body
37:08
Speaker 1: provides data that helps build a better car that helps
37:12
Speaker 1: save other people's lives, is that not a noble thing?
37:16
Speaker 1: I mean. A spokesman for Ford, a guy named West Shorewood,
37:20
Speaker 1: said that most companies are moving toward digital modeling if
37:27
Speaker 1: they can, because it's way way more cost effective to
37:33
Speaker 1: do a bunch of computer simulations than it is to
37:36
Speaker 1: do one test with a human corpse. Yeah, and I
37:40
Speaker 1: think a lot of the people that maybe have objections, Well,
37:42
Speaker 1: first of all, there is the we talked about this
37:44
Speaker 1: on the Stuff That I Want you to Know episodes.
37:45
Speaker 1: You can't tick a box and say I want my
37:48
Speaker 1: body used for this, but not this, this, but not that,
37:51
Speaker 1: you know, So there should be a bit of a
37:55
Speaker 1: eyes wide open thing when you're deciding to do that
37:58
Speaker 1: in the first place, because you can't pick and choose,
38:01
Speaker 1: so it's kind of fair game. And really, in this situation,
38:05
Speaker 1: nothing truly nefarious is happening, right, It's it's it's not
38:08
Speaker 1: like they're getting these illegally or they're, you know, right,
38:12
Speaker 1: something nasty behind the scenes. But I think the people
38:15
Speaker 1: that object to stuff like this is probably on religious
38:17
Speaker 1: grounds where It's like this is in some way, you know, unclean,
38:23
Speaker 1: you know, to use the human vessel, the human temple
38:27
Speaker 1: in these ways. I mean, what's next, Let's be as
38:31
Speaker 1: cold as these folks. What's next? Do you check the
38:34
Speaker 1: box about where your body goes? And then you check
38:37
Speaker 1: the car you want to be tested in? Like I'm
38:40
Speaker 1: okay with being used. It would my body be used
38:43
Speaker 1: in crash test, but it can only be in the
38:47
Speaker 1: newest Maserati, Right, yeah, yeah, exactly, these hips shall no
38:53
Speaker 1: Honda Odyssey touch right right? Still put me still, put
38:58
Speaker 1: me in anything other than a Porsche, etc. There's good
39:02
Speaker 1: news though. Albert King, who is a professor at Wayne State,
39:06
Speaker 1: has been working in cadaver research since nineteen sixty six
39:11
Speaker 1: and said the school had fallen off with their testing
39:15
Speaker 1: in recent years. They used to do like one cadaver
39:18
Speaker 1: a month, and at the time of his interview is
39:20
Speaker 1: saying they do no more than maybe a handful every year.
39:25
Speaker 1: And this comes to us from something published in nineteen
39:29
Speaker 1: ninety five, so several decades of past. But I said,
39:34
Speaker 1: there are benefits of this work, and he's on record
39:38
Speaker 1: in the Journal of Trauma for this, and he said
39:40
Speaker 1: the safe the journal. Look, yeah, if you're if you're
39:45
Speaker 1: hanging out one afternoon and you're like, my day is
39:48
Speaker 1: going too well, check out the Journal of Trauma. They're
39:52
Speaker 1: doing important work. It's just kind of a downer. And
39:55
Speaker 1: and Professor King estimates that the safety improvements may by
40:00
Speaker 1: these tests up to nineteen eighty seven saved at minimum
40:05
Speaker 1: eight thousand, five hundred lives a year. So that's as
40:08
Speaker 1: many as the guy that invented the seatbelt. No, no,
40:11
Speaker 1: not as many as Neil's bowl, and no relation, I wish,
40:15
Speaker 1: but but it looks like that there is a decline
40:20
Speaker 1: in using bodies to test auto accidents, as we can
40:25
Speaker 1: see in how Cadaver's made your Car Safer from Wired.
40:31
Speaker 1: There's not too much to be done now improving safety
40:35
Speaker 1: inside of a car. No, you remember those like you
40:38
Speaker 1: see them all the time, and movies from the forties
40:41
Speaker 1: and the sixties, those uh steering wheels that had like
40:45
Speaker 1: the head of a torpedo in the middle, just facing
40:48
Speaker 1: right for impaling the whole face. You know, that's stuff's done.
40:53
Speaker 1: That's stuff's done. Airbag tech is pretty good, you know
40:56
Speaker 1: what I mean. That will save your life. And again
41:00
Speaker 1: you can't really do much with the design of what
41:03
Speaker 1: a car is. A car is what a car is.
41:05
Speaker 1: But we've gone far enough along in the in the
41:08
Speaker 1: evolution of this technology that there's certain things that just
41:11
Speaker 1: you hit a ceiling, and it's a good ceiling. In
41:14
Speaker 1: this case, it's a safety ceiling that even the cheapest
41:17
Speaker 1: of cars, you know, are going to be relatively safe
41:20
Speaker 1: to occupy. And the next logical step is going to
41:24
Speaker 1: be addressing human error on the side of the driver.
41:28
Speaker 1: And that's still yeah the damas yeah, yeah, who are
41:34
Speaker 1: you excited? I don't know, man. And again, you know
41:36
Speaker 1: you've talked about this on car stuff too, where like
41:38
Speaker 1: a big part of a reticence from some about autonomous
41:42
Speaker 1: vehicles is less about yeah, sure, the safety of it's great,
41:45
Speaker 1: but also like it kind of eliminates car culture in
41:48
Speaker 1: a certain sense because people like cars because they go
41:52
Speaker 1: room room and then they allow you. But then I
41:54
Speaker 1: think will happen is that will become more of a
41:56
Speaker 1: niche kind of interest and you'll still be able to
41:58
Speaker 1: drive them on tracks. But I get I'm sorry, I'm
42:01
Speaker 1: getting ahead of myself. There could become a future where
42:03
Speaker 1: it is illegal for you to drive yourself on a
42:06
Speaker 1: public roadway. Yeah, yeah, it's it's quite possible. And then
42:12
Speaker 1: you go to the greater good argument. But this this
42:16
Speaker 1: is a story for a future episode of Ridiculous History.
42:20
Speaker 1: Right now, we just want you to know. One, crash
42:23
Speaker 1: Test dummies definitely a thing. Two. A lot of those
42:27
Speaker 1: were dead bodies of actual human beings and rugged up
42:31
Speaker 1: bears or drugged up bears, but not cocaine drugged up bears.
42:35
Speaker 1: I feel like a bear on a lot of cocaine.
42:38
Speaker 1: I've never tried cocaine. I don't endorse it, but I
42:40
Speaker 1: feel like I feel like a bear out a really
42:44
Speaker 1: active drug would probably bad news because steer the car
42:49
Speaker 1: a little bit, you know, it'd be a bad news
42:52
Speaker 1: just from flailing around. They would. Yeah, absolutely, Now, not
42:55
Speaker 1: not a good not a good situation there. And we're
42:58
Speaker 1: gonna get in a little bit more tangents and trivia
43:01
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. But I did want to point out, um,
43:03
Speaker 1: the Crash Test Dummies cartoon. It was like a special
43:08
Speaker 1: It was just a one time aired thing and it
43:10
Speaker 1: wasn't like cell animation. It was really bad nineties CGI
43:15
Speaker 1: kind of like it wasn't all serious. It was the
43:18
Speaker 1: action figures were the action figures and then there was
43:21
Speaker 1: a series based on the action figure. So I had
43:23
Speaker 1: said I thought it was maybe the other way around,
43:25
Speaker 1: which is often the case like with he Man and
43:27
Speaker 1: Ninja Turtles and all that. But some of the book
43:31
Speaker 1: comic book. But then there was the cartoon. And then
43:33
Speaker 1: because of the cartoon or the action figures in the
43:35
Speaker 1: cartoon were kind of hand in hand. But the characters
43:38
Speaker 1: names were Vincent Larry who were the main guy. As
43:40
Speaker 1: their vehicles, they all came with a vehicle crash car
43:44
Speaker 1: with Dash. I guess Dash is like a little guy.
43:47
Speaker 1: Maybe Larry had the student driver car with Axel that
43:51
Speaker 1: was their passenger. Then you have Darryl who drove the
43:55
Speaker 1: crash cycle. Did they have a dog? Did they have
43:57
Speaker 1: an animal? I bet you Dash was made the animal. Okay,
44:01
Speaker 1: I'm guessing, but I don't know for a fact. I'm
44:03
Speaker 1: just looking at this list. And then we had spare Tire,
44:06
Speaker 1: which I'm guessing it was a fat joke because he
44:08
Speaker 1: seemed a y. It also drove a crash shopper, which
44:16
Speaker 1: is sort of like a biker gang kind of thing
44:18
Speaker 1: where you picture like maybe you know, a spare tire
44:20
Speaker 1: is a slang for like a belly, and then you
44:23
Speaker 1: had Skid the kid who drove an ATV, which I
44:26
Speaker 1: thought was fun. And then you had a pair hubcap
44:30
Speaker 1: and bumper who had a crash lawnmower. Oh yeah, well
44:34
Speaker 1: you get in situations. Yeah, us, I've got to stop
44:38
Speaker 1: saying you get in situations. Yeah, man, it applies, all right, whatever,
44:44
Speaker 1: But we are going to return next week with some
44:48
Speaker 1: uh with some deep dives into the history of turn signals,
44:52
Speaker 1: and we hope you joined us for that in the
44:54
Speaker 1: In the meantime, maybe nol to the point about tangents
44:58
Speaker 1: in trivia. We take a second to shout out some
45:02
Speaker 1: horrific highway safety films. If you're having too good of
45:06
Speaker 1: an afternoon, you've read the Journal of Trauma and you
45:09
Speaker 1: think I'm still feeling too nice, maybe you should check
45:13
Speaker 1: out these films. That's right. One of the most infamous
45:16
Speaker 1: of these was one called Signal thirty, which is funny
45:20
Speaker 1: because I didn't know this, but there was a band
45:23
Speaker 1: in my hometown. There was a kind of a punk
45:25
Speaker 1: scene there, and they were this punk band called Signal thirty,
45:28
Speaker 1: and that was the name of a traffic safety scared
45:33
Speaker 1: straight kind of video. They used real accident footage to
45:37
Speaker 1: show the results like Faces of Death style. But also
45:42
Speaker 1: there was a weird pro car bent to this there.
45:48
Speaker 1: It was almost like propaganda where it put the onus
45:51
Speaker 1: of blame on the drivers and not the automobiles. And
45:55
Speaker 1: this was the time where some of these cars still
45:57
Speaker 1: maybe left something to be desired in terms of safety, right, yeah,
46:01
Speaker 1: one hundred percent. I also want to shout out I
46:04
Speaker 1: want to shout out two things that our show is
46:07
Speaker 1: very biased about. The first is an excellent documentary called
46:11
Speaker 1: Hell's Highway, The True Story of Highway Safety Films by
46:14
Speaker 1: our pal Brett Wood, who has also made a number
46:18
Speaker 1: of early fiction shows with us before before our parent
46:24
Speaker 1: company really got into it. So check out Brett Wood's work.
46:27
Speaker 1: And also, while you're there, you'll want to check out Max.
46:32
Speaker 1: I hope I don't make this awkward for you. You'll
46:35
Speaker 1: want to check out Ephemeral's excellent work on these highway
46:40
Speaker 1: safety films. Max. As we wrap up today, could you
46:43
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about that to give people a
46:45
Speaker 1: heads up. Yeah. So, there was this weird phenomenon that
46:48
Speaker 1: happened because of so many kids in the fifties being
46:52
Speaker 1: subjected to these awful films like single thirty or like
46:55
Speaker 1: these things. If you look at them, you watch them,
46:57
Speaker 1: they're basically like their horror film The Faces of Death,
47:01
Speaker 1: when that was a thing where you'd see like suicide
47:06
Speaker 1: being an anthology of clips of real deaths. Yeah, so
47:10
Speaker 1: they were very very not for children to call the
47:14
Speaker 1: video nasties sometimes. Yeah, that was a fun, weird term
47:18
Speaker 1: that was used to describe some of these types of
47:21
Speaker 1: snuff adjacent films, you know. Yeah, So we went down
47:25
Speaker 1: this rabbit hole a couple of years ago and we
47:26
Speaker 1: talked to doctor Bernice Murphy who is an author and
47:30
Speaker 1: a professor, and she wrote the book The Highway Horror Film,
47:34
Speaker 1: which is just talking about like all these films come out,
47:35
Speaker 1: like some of the films like Psycho is often attributed
47:39
Speaker 1: to this, like this genre of film. But how so
47:43
Speaker 1: it's a motor hotel that people stop. It's a road movie. Yeah,
47:47
Speaker 1: I got you, Okay, interesting, I didn't think about so
47:49
Speaker 1: like in the film, maybe there would be someone that
47:52
Speaker 1: was like on a road trip and then the horrific
47:55
Speaker 1: event happened. There's there's a couple, I believe there's four
47:59
Speaker 1: different types that she outlines, and one of the types
48:02
Speaker 1: is like you're now in the middle of nowhere, but
48:05
Speaker 1: these areas that you weren't able to access before, but
48:07
Speaker 1: now because the cars, you're able to access these areas
48:10
Speaker 1: and stuff. Hell, Texas Jamesaw Massacre kind of falls under
48:13
Speaker 1: that exactly banner. Yeah, the Dark Side of the Great
48:16
Speaker 1: American Road Trip for surely did not think about that.
48:19
Speaker 1: That's super interesting and that's one of your favorites, I know,
48:24
Speaker 1: And and that's where we're going to because you know,
48:26
Speaker 1: this whole episode that we have doctor Bernice Murphy on
48:29
Speaker 1: is about ridiculous history hero her Carvey, who did a
48:34
Speaker 1: number of highway safety films, especially a lot of drunk
48:37
Speaker 1: driving films at Centro On Films where he worked for
48:40
Speaker 1: thirty something the years, but he also did Carnival Souls.
48:42
Speaker 1: The funny thing is Carnival Souls is really, if you
48:44
Speaker 1: think about it, a highway safety film because the kids
48:48
Speaker 1: being reckless driving and they drive their car off the thing,
48:51
Speaker 1: and I think Skip Elzheimer, who's our other our other
48:55
Speaker 1: guests on that episode, he outlines at the very end
48:58
Speaker 1: by saying, uh, drive, I've step kids, or your soul
49:02
Speaker 1: will be tortured as you slowly descent to Hell. Or
49:05
Speaker 1: something along those lines, which is basically the plot of
49:08
Speaker 1: Carnival Souls. If you haven't seen Carnival Souls, watched it
49:11
Speaker 1: and get ready for all the organ. Yes, there's a
49:14
Speaker 1: lot of organ uh ed, there's a lot more to
49:18
Speaker 1: discuss in the history of the automobile. Now, Noel, you,
49:23
Speaker 1: Max and I are going to call it a day
49:26
Speaker 1: with a great thank you, I think to to our
49:30
Speaker 1: research associate and superproducer Max, as well as to Alex Williams,
49:34
Speaker 1: who can posed this slapping Bob else we think indeed,
49:39
Speaker 1: oh man, yeah, slapping away over there. Um. We'd also
49:43
Speaker 1: like to thank christophrastiotis here in spirit. Eve's Jeff Coats
49:46
Speaker 1: our boy, Alex Williams, you already said that, but I
49:48
Speaker 1: just want to say it twice. So nice, he sayd twy.
49:51
Speaker 1: Jonathan's chicklet. We're gonna see him in person really soon.
49:56
Speaker 1: We're going to south By Southwest. Yeah, he's gonna be there.
49:59
Speaker 1: He's gonna be there. M all right, we'll see how
50:03
Speaker 1: it goes. Um. But yeah, thanks to you, Ben for
50:06
Speaker 1: we were kind of our own Larry and Jerry what
50:10
Speaker 1: were their names? H Vincent Larry doing crash test references
50:14
Speaker 1: yeah that was it. Yeah, I mean I watched it though, no,
50:17
Speaker 1: you daled it. This is awesome. Tune in. Tune in soon, everybody.
50:22
Speaker 1: We are going to debate turn signals and I'll probably
50:28
Speaker 1: talk trash about BMW's We'll see you next time, folks.
50:38
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
50:41
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.