Safety Displayed
This is serious business. Walk into the Institute and you are immediately confronted with two old and crumpled cars, on display as if they are for sale. These are the first-ever cars crashed for the explicit reason of finding out what would happen, and it's not pretty. Wander deeper into the institute and a strange dichotomy smacks you across the face: Here, at this idyllic location and in this spotless white building with gleaming floors, sit hundreds of crashed, crumpled and leaking vehicles.
You can almost see the blood stains. Row upon row, these crashed vehicles are neatly labeled and explained and sorted by category. The display is a clear illustration of who makes the most dangerous cars, and, brutally, why. Off to the side with its own place of honor is a two-car pile up, both Fords and both badly beaten. The Explorer had hit the Focus on the side in a test conducted to prove the value of side air bags - proof vividly illustrated by a dark swath of face paint on the hood of the Ford Explorer. It's one of the more recent safety issues that the Institute has begun testing. As a result of their research and tests, O'Neil says that side airbags are important -- but what's even more critical is the type of airbag, because the point of side airbags is to protect the head. "It's not as necessary to protect the torso with an airbag," O'Neil says. "A side airbag that protects the head is a requirement."
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