Does GM use human bodies as crash test dummies? That's not the plot of a 1970s cult classic; it's the claim of one car-safety specialist in Sweden, who told newspaper Expressen that GM recently wrapped up a multiyear research study using human cadavers in car-crash simulations. The man says Saab cars were involved in the project, which reportedly involved people who had donated their own bodies—assumedly in the name of scientific research—not political dissidents. Well, that's a relief.
Is this an urban myth? I read somewhere that in the 1970's when air bags were being tested, an American auto company used dead babies. When a row erupted over this the testing was moved to Germany. After the same agitators stopped Germany using these cadavers the car companies simply installed the airbags as they were, and used the statistics from live children.
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