PHOTO: Chris Mueller/Redux

SMART PARTS: Denton's most complex force sensor, the pelvis load cell of a WorldSID dummy, can record 12 data variables.

This family of dummies is designed for use in crash tests simulating frontal impacts: cars running squarely into other cars, trees, walls—that kind of thing. Also in Denton's catalog of 40 dummies are models for testing side impacts, rear impacts, accidents involving pedestrians, and air-bag blows on small children. Denton's customers include Chrysler, Ford, Honda, Hyundai, Nissan, Porsche, Volkswagen, India's Tata Motors, and China's FAW. The company ships 20 to 25 dummies a month.

Beebe explains that in a crash test, a dummy's sensors register a range of parameters: the force of a blow to the thigh, the torque on the neck during sudden deceleration, the compression of the chest against a seat belt. These measurements are then converted into injury criteria, which reveal the harm—anything from minor concussion to death—that would have been done to the vehicle's occupants had they been human. Such injury knowledge comes mostly from researchers studying how Newtonian mechanics applies to the human body, usually by performing impact and deceleration tests on cadavers, pig carcasses, or eager graduate students.

But Denton's dummies do more than car crashes. They've been used in roller coaster tests in Iowa and in simulated train wrecks in India. They've been dropped out of airplanes, strapped into crashing helicopters, and shot out of cannons. They've checked out school-bus seats, motorcycle air bags, and ski-slope protection nets. An Australian clothing company ordered a “perfect size 10” dummy to try on its new styles. And in a TV show, a Denton Hybrid III was punched in the face by a professional boxer and held in a neck lock by a Brazilian jujitsu fighter.

“There were some applications where we had no clue what they were doing,” Beebe says. “It was proprietary or government related. The dummies left brand-new. They came back in parts.”

A dummy like No. 0200-137 consists of 350 metal and plastic parts. Denton fabricates most of them itself, and just about everything is done by hand.

First comes the skin, the salmon-colored flexible plastic that covers a dummy's body. To make the feet, for example, a worker pours a milkshake-like substance—liquid vinyl—into an aluminum mold the size of a brick. The mold's interior is shaped like a foot (that is, a dummy's toeless foot), and the vinyl will solidify, or cure, when it goes into an oven. The skin for the dummy's head, upper arms, lower arms, hands, thighs, and shins is made the same way.

In another part of the factory, a group of workers fabricates steel and aluminum parts for the dummy's skeleton. One technician loads some specs into a computer numerical control, or CNC, machine, which automatically cuts, drills, and mills a steel part—in this case, an intricate disk for the dummy's shoulder. Over in another corner, a worker bends long strips of steel that will form No. 0200-137's ribs. Co-workers call this guy “Rib Man.”

As the workers weld the smaller parts to the larger ones, pieces of the skeleton begin to take shape: skull, spine, hips, ankles, knees, elbows. The dummy's neck is more intricate. A large fraction of car accidents, especially rear collisions, result in severe neck injuries. To create a structure that can mimic the movement of a human neck, a worker mixes together natural rubber, polyacrylates, nitriles, neoprene, and butyl to obtain precise damping characteristics. He injects the mixture into a press that molds a handful of disk-shaped pieces, which will be alternated with metal rings to form the Hybrid III's characteristic segmented neck.

From different sectors of the plant, No. 0200-137's vinyl and metal parts converge in the assembly area, where they wait for the white-coated technician. The technician starts by measuring and weighing the head, limbs, and torso, and with a special scale he determines each section's center of gravity, which has to match that of a real person. To assemble the dummy, all it takes is a bunch of hex screws and a wrench. But No. 0200-137 is not ready yet. He needs some sensors.

On my second day at Denton, I head out to its headquarters in Rochester Hills, Mich. From Beebe's remarks, I already have an inkling that the company appreciates the humor in the otherwise serious work it does. My suspicions are soon confirmed: dummy bobbleheads greet visitors at the reception desk; a poster of a dummy posing as Rodin's The Thinker hangs in a corridor.