The beginnings of vehicle crash tests
02/04/2011
The importance of passive safety became increasingly important over the last century, once the fundamental problems of individual motorization had been solved. In the beginning, of course, there were no high-tech crash test facilities available, such as those operated by the automotive industry and road safety centers today. The first crash tests were therefore carried out using cranes.
Porsche destroyed a Porsche 904 GTS in this way in the mid-1960s, bringing tears to the eyes of many a fan. But this method was also used elsewhere (see picture). Simulating the consequences of an accident with a crane suffered from two problems: the maximum height of the crane limited the impact speed, which was also dependent on the aerodynamics of the vehicle, and it was probably not trivial to align the vehicle properly in flight to ensure a right angle to the ground. For this reason, sled designs and road-based impact test facilities were soon developed, but these required considerably more space and infrastructure. Today, the tests are primarily simulated on the computer and only carried out with real objects for safety reasons. In the 1960s, however, this would have required a computer that would probably have covered the area of a medium-sized city.
