Crash test dummies go from four wheels to two

(Credit:
Screenshot by Tim Hornyak/CNET)

How can you get a concussion from falling off a bike? Canadian engineering students recently took the training wheels off a crash test dummy to find out.

Roughly 25 students from Carleton University and Algonquin College in Ottawa spent eight months building an intrepid mannequin that’s designed to go over the handlebars at 15 mph.

Dummies designed for car crash simulations aren’t considered useful for scenarios where a cyclist would slam on the brakes on impact and go hurtling over the front wheel.

The dummy is embedded with sensors and load cells, which can measure the force of an impact as it careens down a special track. The data will be analyzed to determine what kinds of injuries a human cyclist would experience under the same crash conditions.

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“We’ve been trying to simulate whether you would get a concussion from an over-the-handlebars-type accident,” Evan Hayes, a fourth-year student in mechanical engin… [Read more]

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