We’re ALL for safety around here. In fact, we actually buckle up every time we leave the driveway and we make our kids do the same. It’s the cheapest and most reliable protection available for anyone from race car drivers right on down to old ladies hogging the left lane at 44mph. Seat belts have been tested in almost every way under the sun over the decades and while we have all seen the crash test dummy video, have you ever seen the German human crash test dummy video?! This footage comes from the 1980s Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Show, hosted by Jack Palance.

This video shows us several instances of real people being used to drive and crash the cars they are in to test the efficacy of seat belts. These are not low speed affairs. In fact the crashes with the tree and the rear end job with the big Mercedes are downright violent. As best as we can tell, every one of the drivers was able to get out of the car and walk away but they had to have been sore in the morning.

Before the ability to do extensive computer modeling and have dummies that “talk back” with respect to a load of sensors that essentially show where normal people would be hurt or wounded after a crash, this was apparently the best way German engineers figured that they could get feedback. No telling what it paid to volunteer or if these men and women were simply engineers themselves who decided to take part in the work.

If they had asked us to do this, we’d have respectively declined and watched anyone ballsy enough to do it, drive headlong into a tree. No thanks!

Press play below to see this bizarre German footage of human crash test volunteers –