Ford Ranger safety expert Mark Fountain is focused on supercomputers and crash simulations, but he never forgets the flesh-and-blood drivers he must protect.
He's the Big Brother who keeps the company's designers on their toes. The supercomputer he uses in Dearborn, Michigan, enables him to conduct multiple tests each day, instead of weeks for one test.
Each of the Ranger's 9000 simulated crash tests examined two million elements and allowed Fountain to view small segments of the car or its occupants before cameras then confirmed his results during 110 full-vehicle crash tests, 410 sled tests and 800 subsystem tests.
Multiple cameras on board take 2000 frames and record 2.4 million data points a second. And the dummies carry 140 sensors measuring compression, loading and body acceleration.
A crash happens at very high speed. It takes you 100 milliseconds - a tenth of a second - to blink. Hit a pole side-on at 50km/h and the car senses the impact and its force, triggers the airbags, and the car rebounds, all within 70 milliseconds. You won't yet have registered the impact, yet the car will have ensured you walk away. Fountain's programme includes checking that off-roading won't set off the system.Jacqui Madelin
