Ford use balloons for target practice

Ford are constantly working to improve their vehicle safety ratings. Crash tests have always been an expensive pastime: when you smash one car into another, there is a lot of bodywork to straighten out afterwards, and that's getting more costly all the time. Although there are plenty of unsold cars standing around, the idea of using these for test purposes is hard to justify to the tax payer who is ultimately footing the bill. Now Ford are using inflatables that serve the same purpose. These balloon dummies don't exactly come cheap at $10,000 each, but at least they are reusable.