GM Opens Rollover Crash Testing Facility

January 12th, 2007

General Motors opened a state-of-the-art rollover crash test facility in December 2005, becoming the first North American automaker to integrate in-house testing for the infrequent but potentially deadly rollover crashes that claim 10,000 lives a year. Rollovers account for just 2 percent of all crashes but claim 40 percent of the fatalities annually on American roadways, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

GM’s goal for the $10 million facility is to study ways to potentially reduce injuries and deaths in rollover crashes by developing sensors for air bags that can help protect occupants in a rollover and help to keep occupants from being ejected. Conducting rollover tests in house also increases efficiency and saves money,

The 38,500-square-foot rollover crash test facility is the newest safety lab in the 4,000-acre Proving Grounds in Milford, MI, and is located adjacent to GM’s existing barrier building, where about 600 full vehicle crash tests are conducted each year. Between 150 and 200 rollover crash tests will be conducted a year in the new facility beginning in 2007, including a range of models from GM’s global product portfolio.

The rollover facility includes a 120-foot bay of lights consisting of 1,728 lamps, each generating 1,000 watts of light. The lights can move from 27 feet above to within one foot of the floor and articulate to 80 degrees allowing better illumination of the crashes that are captured on high-speed video for analysis.

Multiple types of rollover tests will be conducted in the new facility, including:

• Trip Over –The most frequent type of rollover, accounting for nearly 70 percent of rollovers. A driver loses control, slides sideways, and has the motion of the vehicle arrested by hitting a curb or sliding off of the road.
• Ditch Fall-over – This simulates a driver driving off of the side of a road onto a steep embankment and over-correcting. The ditch fixture has four 5,500-pound panels that can be positioned to simulate different angles of descent. It represents about 10 percent of rollovers.
• Corkscrew Ramp Flip-over – This simulates a driver at high speed striking a rigid object like a center median and flipping over and remaining in the original lanes of travel (as opposed to going into oncoming traffic). It account for about 5 percent of rollovers.
• Dolly Rollover – This test has been used in rollover research for more than 35 years and is conducted with the vehicle being pulled sideways on a platform at a 23-degree angle.

Entry Filed under: Safety Test