Dummies Help Teach a Lesson: Traffic Safety

The scene Thursday on Agoura Road in Agoura Hills was staged for people training to become law enforcement officers.

But a side benefit of the demonstration on what happens in collisions between motor vehicles and bicycles was that it also helped make students from area schools, who watched from a safe distance, aware of the dangers posed by traffic, said Joe Grasso, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

During one portion of the demonstration--conducted by Texas A&M; University--a dummy weighing about 150 pounds was arranged to simulate a pedestrian crossing the street, he said. In that test, the car hit the dummy at about 40 m.p.h. and knocked it about 60 feet.

“This is done to help us realize that as human beings, we are very easily injured and killed by vehicles that have no soul,” Grasso said. “We cannot beat machinery.”

In another part of the lesson, a dummy was placed on a bicycle that was then struck by a car, so that the officers in training could analyze what takes place in that event.

The officers were from various agencies, including the Los Angeles Police Department, California Highway Patrol and the Sheriff’s Department, Grasso said.

The class is designed to teach a type of police science that uses sophisticated techniques to reconstruct accidents. For example, Grasso said, officers are taught how to determine a vehicle’s speed by measuring tire marks on pavement and from dents in vehicles. They also learn other techniques, such as how to inspect brake pads to determine when the driver hit the brakes, he said.