1^st May, 2001

The $100 million constantly crashing man

Alf Persson is by far the most expensive of the more than 10,000 employees at Saab Automobile.

During the last 12 years, 47 year old Persson has cost Saab more than $100 million – salary excluded. This extravagance is by no means due to Alf’s negligence. On the contrary, it is the result of him being very efficient and careful in his job as work supervisor at Saab’s Crash Test Laboratory in Trollhattan, Sweden.

"This is the price we pay for taking crashworthiness seriously. We never rest on our laurels," says Alf.

"On average, we crash one car every two days to make sure the safety of our cars will keep on improving. There are no shortcuts to the standard of safety that Saab cars provide."

Alf Persson began his crashing career in 1989, and has so far been involved in demolishing more than 1500 cars. In addition, he has run more than 1000 sled tests on sub-systems, such as units consisting of seat and door side. The crash test programme at Saab has grown dramatically since Alf began working at the crash track.

"When developing the second generation of the Saab 900 in the early 1990s, we ran 19 different types of crash test. Nine of these were stipulated by legal requirements," he recalls. "In the work on today’s Saab 9-5, we ran more than 60 different crash tests. However, during the same period, the number of legally required crash tests had risen by just three to a total of 12."

The reason for this substantial increase in the number of crash tests is obviously the need for simulating the sequence of events in real-life road accidents. To be able to build cars with ever-improving safety, the crash tests must be continually developed. But is it really necessary to run these expensive crashes with all of the sophisticated computer simulation facilities available today?

"The deformation of the body structure when subjected to a certain load can be simulated relatively accurately. But it is much more difficult to simulate to the extent required the movements of the occupants inside the car following a crash. The movements of the dummies and the injury values they record are best ascertained in actual crash tests," explains Alf.