The FIA Institute and Toyota have combined technology and expertise to help improve safety in high speed race car accidents.

Toyota has been using a computer simulation system called Total Human Model Safety (THUMS) to help it design safer production vehicles for several years. THUMS is a virtual representation of the human body that can provide Toyota engineers with precise data about the injuries real people might suffer in different kinds of vehicle accidents.

The FIA Institute and Toyota have worked together to use the THUMS system to recreate high speed accidents and their effects on human physiology, allowing them to study the kind of serious injuries that are difficult to measure with conventional crash test dummies. The results of the new study are in the process of completion.

The FIA Institute targeted this technology specifically to help study high-speed rear impact crashes in the FIA Formula One World Championship and Indy Racing League (IRL). THUMS has proved very effective for analysis of the complex interaction between the driver's body and the car in a high speed accident.

The FIA Institute and Terry Trammell, a fellow of the FIA Institute and consultant to IRL, have provided data on accidents of this type and information on race car seat structures. These have been used by Toyota to create virtual collisions using THUMS and simulated race car seat designs, which have succeeded in replicating spinal injuries from high speed rear impact collisions.

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