How many lives have you saved? 195,000….

It’s a dirty job, but someone has to accessorize their lab coats with a helmet! (As opposed to clothes and ipod protection when cleaning-cleaning-cleaning lab equipment).

This grin-inducing news article about U professor James J. Ryan's retractable seatbelt invention was worth sharing.. I mean over 195,000 is pretty good for one guy! It's cropped by me from “His crashed helped make ours less dangerous. The legacy of U research pioneer James J. Ryan,” Rick Moore. http://www1.umn.edu/umnnews/Feature_Stories/His_crashes_helped_make_ours_less_dangerous.html

…James J. Ryan's research on car safety began in 1952, and in the ensuing decade he conducted dozens and dozens of groundbreaking--sometimes in the literal sense--experiments on automobiles. Donath showed a number of videotape clips of these experiments at his presentation on November 15. In one, a vehicle was dropped from a crane to the ground to simulate a crash speed of 40 mph. Other experiments had vehicles ramming into barriers outside of the mechanical engineering building on the East Bank of the Twin Cities campus in Minneapolis.

… Ryan acquired the "Crash" nickname for his willingness to avail himself (and occasionally some of his graduate students) as a subject in crash tests on campus. Yes, this was before the days of crash test dummies, and no, there will be no sarcastic statement here as to the relative IQs of the human subjects. (It should also be noted that Ryan did not put his graduate students at undue risk; he subjected himself to the trials ahead of his volunteers.)....