Development of Testing and Evaluation of Child Restraint Systems and Child Test Dummies by NHTSA

An extensive program was undertaken by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to establish appropriate means and procedures for evaluating the effectiveness of child restraints in automobile crashes. This was an extension of an earlier program which involved testing of commercially available three and six year old child test dummies. A three year old child test dummy (produced by Alderson Research Laboratory) was found to provide acceptable acceleration and kinematic measurements and this model was further tested and evaluated. Static and dynamic tests were developed to calibrate the test dummy, which would assure the uniformity of construction from sample to sample, and produce the uniformity of measurements in crash testing. The calibration involved