A Crash Test can only be Complete once they do This

When you see advertisements by companies like Saab or Volvo that focus on how safe their cars are, they often show you elaborate videos of their crash test methods - to win your confidence. And those videos inevitably show you how they test those cars with crash test dummies. Is that how it is really done? If you have always suspected that there has to be more to these crash tests than merely the use of dummies, you could be onto something.

The thing is, as advanced as the understanding of the safety departments of the auto companies is of how they must interpret the things that happened to crash test dummies, their understanding isn't perfect. They can never know how exactly the safety features on their cars can translate into real world results until they use actual humans strapped to those seats. Every car company has to do this; the question is, how.

The answer is that they use cadavers. When generous-minded people leave their body to science, many of those bodies end up strapped to car seats in a crash test. And it's been this way for close to 80 years now. They use cadavers to test the safety of air bags, the safety of a steering column design, the safety of a laminated windshield and everything else. How about the 2011 Ford Explorer that has inflatable rear seatbelts? Ford keeps advertising this safety feature these days; it's a design that would not have been possible if it were not for how they tested with human cadavers. So what do the big car companies actually do? Do they order dead bodies, and then hand them over to their engineers? Not exactly. Those engineers really don't have the expertise needed to handle cadaver crash tests properly. Instead, they farm this work out to the universities that do have the required expertise.

Whatever test results come out of universities, all car manufacturers tap into them. For instance, with the inflatable seatbelts idea that Ford had, they really had no idea how it would work in real life to have seatbelts that could inflate in a flash. What would happen for instance, if there was a child with those seatbelts on? They needed to know exactly what it would do to the internal organs of a human to have seatbelts explode into a balloon all of a sudden. They had a cadaver crash test test done for them, and the results were encouraging enough that the device was offered on an actual car this year.

If you think about it, this isn't just some commercial thing that those cadavers are used for. Experts estimate that the advances made in the vehicle crash safety through testing with cadavers has saved about 10,000 lives so far. What could be better science?

What would you do for Affordable Auto Insurance -

for Instance, would you get Married for It?

If you've been looking at your car insurance quotes and swearing to yourself that you have no idea how these people get their figures, here's a clue - mostly, they get their figures working out what kind of driving history you have. When it comes to auto insurance, there's no part of your life or your personal driving history that they consider to be too personal. They look at every ticket, citation, fender bender, how much you drive every year, what kind of car you drive, where you live, anything they can get their hands on. To them, affordable auto insurance is nothing about being fair to you; it's everything about finding out if you drive a staid family car that you're not likely to drive fast; it's about their taking reassurance from how little you drive every year and then telling themselves that the less you are on the road, the smaller the risk you are; it's about being someone who is solidly dependable - you don't want any moving violations or accidents that tell them that you could be a risky bet. If you've had your license for only a year, they tell themselves that they don't know enough about you to be able to judge the kind of driver you are; it's like being 20 years old and having a thin dossier for the credit score people to able to judge you by.

One of first things you can do for affordable auto insurance is to make sure you have the longest possible driving history. A long driving history doesn't necessarily mean that you need to have been driving for long. It just means you need to get your license at the stroke of 12 midnight the day you turn 16. The longer you have a license, the deeper the auto insurance people can look into your past to see you have any violations on your record. If you don't drive at all despite the fact that you possess a license, that gives you a very long and clean driving record. That's a good thing.

There are certain things about you that you just can't control and that will go and affect the kind of rates you get quoted. For instance, if you are male, that makes you a high risk group. Males, whether they're teenaged boys or 30-year-old men, happen to get themselves into more trouble than girls or women do. You just can't do anything about this assumption that insurance companies have.

You don't have to do anything drastic with your life to save $100 or so off the $800 you spend on auto insurance every year (that's what the average American spends). But you do need to know that if you happen to get married, you're supposed to have your best action-packed years behind you and have mellowed. They'll lower your insurance rates. When you go house hunting, you probably don't get to see the charts the auto insurance companies have for your zip code. They look to see how many cars get stolen in your area, how many car-related accidents there are, how much it costs to get a procedure done at a local hospital, and how much repairing the car costs. Depending on how your particular area fares, you get better or worse rates. Do you need to change your zip code for this? That's entirely up to you. You get to save about $100 per year, moving to the best possible area.

Buying American Cars Supports Local Industry, Right? Now What is an American car?

Remember how back in the 90s, American auto manufacturers, a bit threatened by the success of the Japanese imports, began to push the virtues of buying American and supporting American industry? You even got a little sticker on your car that you purchase was built in America by Americans. The 1994 American Automobile Labeling Act has required for years that all cars selling in the US come with window stickers to mention where the car was assembled, how much local content the car has and where the engine and transmission came from. Let's say that you are someone who has really taken that message to heart and you really want to only buy American cars so that you can support American industry. You think you deserve a little bit of luxury and you choose the 2011 Lincoln MKZ. You tell your friend who is a member of the United Auto Workers union and hope for some well-deserved praise. All you get for your trouble though is a dirty look. It turns out, your car is manufactured south of the border in Mexico.

What do you do when an American company like Ford wants to sell cars in America to make elsewhere? True fans of the Buy American movement certainly don't like your European, Korean or Japanese brands. But they also completely disapprove of cars that the Big Three assemble in other countries. Even if it is only the assembly that takes place elsewhere. With the Lincoln MKZ, high-value parts like the engine and transmission actually get completely made in America. If it gets assembled elsewhere though, it usually isn't considered to be domestic. A car that's made in America has a VIN number (that you find on the base of your windshield on the driver's-side) that starts with the numeral 1. What should you do if you are really trying to keep jobs in America whatever purchase you make? How are American cars supposed to be defined?

According to that AALA's labeling practice, a Honda Accord would be almost completely American since it is almost completely built with domestic parts in America. And a Buick Regal, that is built in Germany out of internationally-sourced parts is almost completely foreign. To the common buyer though, buying Honda feels like buying Japanese while buying a Buick feels like buying American. And then of course, there is the whole debate on what to do with Canada. The AALA's labeling practice considers anything manufactured in Canada to be domestic to the US. Basically, all you get is a sticker that tells you how much of the car was made where. The government has backed out of actually telling you which the American cars are. There is no sign that says "This is an American car".

The decision on what constitutes an American car ultimately comes down to the consumer. It is up to you to decide.