dhk:

Claes Tingvall, a car safety specialist with the Swedish Road Administration (Vägverket), told the newspaper Expressen that GM recently finished a multi-year research project in which dead human bodies were used. “For certain things, it’s important to use cadavers. [The tests] involved people who had donated their own bodies,” Tingvall told Expressen. (via The Local - Human cadavers used in auto crash tests)

/they b dead, they don’t care anymore.  If it saves a living human, I think it was worth.  A bit morbid, but worth it. 

Last year, I read the book Stiff, by Mary Roach that has a whole chapter devoted to discussing human crash test dummies and the “ghastly, necessary science of impact tolerance.”  Reading this extremely fascinating book actually got me thinking about what I want to happen with my body after I die.  The book is unexpectedly and quite blessedly hilarious, although the humor never comes at the expense of the dead bodies that populate its pages.   Instead, Roach uses humor as a kind of psychic safety valve, a vital and much-appreciated tension release from what is, at times, some very intense subject matter.  (Fortunately, there are no pictures.)

Her opening lines:

The way I see it, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship.  Most of your time is spent lying on your back.  The brain has shut down.  The flesh begins to soften.  Nothing much new happens, and nothing is expected of you.

She’s kind of right.  To continue:

Not there’s anything wrong with just lying on your back.  In its way, rotting is interesting too, as we will see.  It’s just that there are other ways to spend your time as a cadaver.  Get involved with science.  Be an art exhibit.  Become part of a tree.  Some options for you to think about.

Read more excerpts here. 

Now I want to read her new book called Bonk, another hilarious account of science in search of better sex.  It’s now on my list.  :)