What Would A Human Have To Look Like To Be Injury Proof In A Car Accident?

Just how poorly equipped is the human body to withstand car accidents? If we could, hypothetically, alter our bodies to make them perfectly suited to survive car accidents uninjured, what modifications would we need, and what would we look like-and how different from how we look right now, would our bodies be?

These sound like silly questions, but to demonstrate just how poorly equipped our current bodies are to hold up to the forces that are put on them in car accidents, researchers in Australia tried to answer these exact questions.

Data Creates Hypothetical Human

Using data from the type of injuries people commonly sustain in car accidents, the researchers modified a human body to the extent that it would be able to be almost injury-proof in an accident.

The resulting human—if you can call it that—called Graham, is, of course, not real, but the grotesque difference between Graham and our bodies, is illustrative of how our bodies in their current form, are simply not designed to withstand the forces of a car accident.

What Modifications Are Needed?

The first thing you notice about Graham (shown here: http://www.meetgraham.com.au/view-graham), is his head.

His head is large, because it is filled with fluid and fluid like sacs. The researchers did this, recognizing how much damage our brains sustain in car accidents. Graham’s head is also filled with fat (much the same way our organs are protected by fat), and there are even ligaments in Graham’s head, keeping the brain in place.

Graham’s face seems distorted, for good reason. Anything that sticks out-like a nose—is a potential area of injury, and thus, to ensure injury avoidance, all of Graham’s facial features must be sunken in.

Graham also has no neck. That’s because scientists and researchers could find no safe way for any human to have a neck, and get through a car accident uninjured. In fact, to give further protection, even though he has no neck, Graham’s ribs go all the way up where his neck would be, to the base of the skull.

Those ribs are different from the ribs we have today Graham’s midsection seems distended, because the ribs are lined with tiny airbags, or air sacs, intended to protect the ribs from impacts.

The Bottom Half

You may notice Graham’s feet don’t look like ours—they look more like a horse’s hoofs and legs. That’s because if Graham is a pedestrian, he would need a way to get out of the way of moving cars. The horse-like feet help Graham spring out of the way fast enough to avoid oncoming cars.

Graham’s knees also help him in the event he is hit by a pedestrian; unlike ours, that bend one way, Graham’s knees bend in multiple directions, minimizing injury if he is hit by a car from any direction in the legs.

Obviously, Graham is just hypothetical, a model to see what we would have to evolve into, to be truly crash proof. But the abnormality of Graham’s appearance, and the difference between Graham’s body and ours, is intended to shock you, and alert you to how poorly designed our bodies are, to hold up against the forces of an accident.

Contact our Rhode Island personal injury lawyers at Robert E. Craven & Associates at 401-453-2700 today for help with your injury case.

Source:

cnbc.com/2016/07/22/what-a-crash-proof-human-looks-like.html