This page contains lots of photographs - please be patient.
We were approached by the Institute just after Christmas. Their representative was Tony Foster. Tony made his initial contact via the DRCF forums, then in person when he visited us on the airfield one Saturday afternoon to have a look at what we do. It was on this visit that Tony explained what he was after. Pat Dare, Ant Mullins, Dave Disney and myself agreed to take up his challenge.
The challenge was to make 7 cars radio controlled. Then control and drive these cars into targets, yes, CRASH THE LOT! You see, the institute has a vast array of members, mainly professional crash investigators. They organise a crash event once every 10 years, but the main aim is to support the investigation of traffic accidents through training, support, seminars and open days. This event consisted of crashing cars, whilst carefully documenting, filming and measuring each crash with high tech equipment. This will then provide much needed data which will provide material for crash investigation, lectures and training in the subject. Professionals from the police and other bodies were also there on the day. The data captured on the day will assist these guys in their day job.
So where did we come in? We crashed 7 cars of all different types, then for the other three crashes of the weekend, human crash test dummy; Rusty Hate had been flown in from the states to crash 3 brand new Toyota Avensis's. Rusty (pictured below) is considered the best in the business when it comes to crashing cars and not getting hurt. Tomorrow's World carried a feature on him, which was filmed over this weekend.
All 4 of us committed to the project turned up to Darley Moor Race Track on the Friday prior to the weekend's activities to ensure all 7 of our cars were fully kitted out and ready to go for the Saturday Morning. The configuration was quite simple. The steering was controlled by a large servo fixed to the dashboard, and run through a set of 40 mhz radio, then an independently controlled brake system operated by separate set of radio, also on 40mhz.
The servo and steering system was based on a system that had been successfully used 10 years ago in the previous event held by the institute. Pictured above is the servo fitted to the trial car, our Ford Orion. Altogether we had 3 sets of gear, so we were able to set up 3 cars ready to go, and the other 4 could be kitted out ready to have the gear transferred very quickly on the day. Pictured below is Patrick, making sure all the radio gear is secure in the radio box fastened to the back of each car. centre pic is me as I make some adjustments to the braking system as Dave Disney thinks about putting his wings on to have a fly (sorry Dave). Actually Dave is fitting the steering system to a Ford Granada. The cars we were fitting were anything from D reg. to H reg. and all of different engine sizes.
My brake system pictured below had two uses. The first to brake the car just before impact (as in a real life crash, the brake is usually applied too late). Secondly if there was any failure of the steering system, the car could be stopped quickly and safely. This brake system was applied to all cars bar one (where the car itself did not have any brake system). You can see the cleverly designed system including air tank below prior to fitting and then fitted in one of the cars, ready to crash.
Preparation was everything, as on the day we had little time for anything to go wrong. Preparation included the construction of a life size dummy to crash some of the cars into. A couple of the institute guys there on the Friday constructed a dummy using scaffold, chain, carpet and lots of duck tape. It was essential that the dummy was as heavy, and as strong as a real human body to give the results some meaning. The construction of the dummy can be seen below. This dummy was used for two car to dummy collisions, then sat in the very last car to crash as a passenger without a seatbelt.
The 7 cars we set up to crash can be seen below:
The plan of attack for the crash test worked well. Patrick steered each car to it's crash following the car in a chase vehicle (it was essential to chase the car due to the long run up needed for each crash). Dave Disney drove the chase car, I stood at the crash location to control the brakes, and Ant Mullins was chief Gopher and photographer. So on the day Ant's job was to assist with the change-over of radio gear, then leg it back to the crash site to get all the action on camera.
All 7 of the crashes were a success. The only hitch on the day was one of the Renaults running out of petrol as it zoomed towards the target, as the crash would have been too slow I stopped it using the brake system.
After a quick re-fuel the car refused to start so this was overcome by pushing the car in free-wheel down the track until a decent speed was achieved before allowing the car to coast to impact.
All the vehicles were "bump started" by putting them into gear, then pushing them off with a second car. One of the vehicles reached 62 mph!!! Just take a look at the mess we managed to make of some of these cars:
The video was quite spectacular, and may even be shown at our next club evening. At the end of the weekend, all the cars were disposed of and scrapped, including the 3 brand new cars that Toyota kindly donated - what a shame!!!