Running from a car - is that really so hard?

I'd expand it to 'avoiding a car', so they could test things like jumping out of the way or running and pushing someone out of the way - both being staples of TV and films.

I agree that this would be a bugger to test. Padding would slow a runner down, and even if you padded the car you couldn't remove the risk of your test subject ending up under the wheels.

Maybe they could start by testing the speed and agility of a running man (or woman), then try to build an RC rig that could duplicate the speed (easy) and agility (very difficult I'd think) of a person with buster strapped to it.

They could even have someone 'run' along a mock street as if avoiding a car (maybe chase them in a golf buggy or something small, capable of stopping before it runs over the runner if they trip and unlikely to cause injury even if it does hit them). Then use the rig to duplicate those manoeuvres as closely as it can while being chased by a real car.

Yeah, expanding the scope would indeed be a good idea. But, sadly, it's the testing protocol that might tackle the whole thing here... Because, despite tha fact that there would be safe ways to prove that a car can't take a bend a running man can - we all know that the guys want to show an actual man chased by an actual car. and, since the test requires a moving, actively reacting test subject, the usual human analogues are no solution here.

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A third objective for this test could be diving right before the car's going to hit you. You lie flat on the ground and the car passes over you. Of course, in the movies, the chase car always has a high enough suspension to allow for someone to fit under it.

To start at the beginning: What would the minimum ride height of a vehicle need to be for a person to be able to lie under it? Stipulation: not touching any part of the exhaust system as to avoid serious burns.

I'm afraid human technology is nowhere near that.

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Nash Entertainment has two police cam videos of people who got hit by cars with enough force that it literally knocked them out of their shoes.

One video (shown on World's Dumbest) shows a guy trying to cross a highway, only to get plowed into by a driver that was on drugs.

The other (shown on both World's Dumbest and either Most Shocking or World's Wildest Police Videos) shows a suspect inadvertently blundering in front of a police cruiser while trying to bail out of his escape vehicle; the police officer couldn't stop in time, and can be heard cursing about the fact that he hit the suspect.

This might be a bit of a challenge to set up; but they might do a double exposure process - have the runner do his "evasion run" without the car, then overlay the car trying to follow the pattern, to see if the car can do it faster. it would take some kind of tech to make a projected marker duplicate the runner's pattern.

I really like this idea because it's one of my pet peeves in film. Just jumping into a doorway would let may poor victims escape.

I like the foam rubber car approach. You might be able to get away with it if you had something like a souped up electric wheelchair in the middle of a car-sized block of light foam rubber, maybe? Keep the robotics out of it if your target is live; better to have a human with some driving control.

Still dangerous, I suppose.

Maybe they could build two football field sized grids. Each element would be a light and sensor space every foot or so. When a car or person gets near the sensor, the corresponding light on the other grid would illuminate. That way, the car could chase the light of the human, and the human could avoid the light of the car.

You might even be able to manage it with a smart enough camera and spotlight/laser display method combination, so as to avoid the grid hardware.

The sensor-grid would, I suspect, be far too time consuming, expensive and complex for MB to consider trying - and that is without trying to add 'buildings' a runner might try to use as cover and having to duplicate their positions.

A 'foam' car runs into the rather major problem in that it will not turn as a real car does. The turning circle of a car is denoted by the wheel-base, which is considerably larger than a wheel-chair or golf-cart.
I guess that it *might* be possible to take an existing car and strip it of everything but the wheels and frame, using that as the basis for a foam body. But even this would have problems, as it isn't going to handle like a real car due to having a significantly lower mass and would still be dangerous if it drives over someone.

A foam car could, however, be a viable way to test jumping/pushing someone out of the path of a car. In this case the whole 'car' could be made out of padded lightweight material, as it doesn't need to move under its own power or make any turns.

I'm of the opinion that the best way to go about testing would be to try to find something to replace the most fragile thing - the runner. If you could avoid a car using something that is somewhat less agile than a human, then logically a human *should* be able to avoid the car as well. And if it is a close run thing, and you have an idea how agile a human is, you could make a reasonable guess as to if a human may have faired somewhat better.

One thing to note is that a human who is running at top speed isn't going to be capable of turning quite as quickly as you might think - there is a good reason athletic tracks have curved corners rather than right angles. It may be possible to find 'bot design that is capable of turning at roughly the same angles as a human - this would require some testing but seems viable for a chase-test.

They can use an electric tourist trolley, such as the Cushman Shuttle 6.

Back when I worked as a yard attendant for a long-term parking lot, the facility had an electric tourist trolley; if the other staffers weren't using it to shuttle people back and forth to their cars, I used it to tow the trailer with the air compressor and other items I needed to service the cars on the lot.

It wasn't anything as fancy as the one I linked you to, but it was a good machine. IIRC, it had three benches (two rear-facing) in addition to the front captain's chairs. As you can imagine, it was as long as a compact (give or take), which makes it a reasonable substitute for the myth.

I could get the thing to about 10 - 15 MPH or so (which was a good thing, as I had to go out on the open road for a bit to access the lot) and could take tight corners at speed if I was careful.

If the MBs could get such a vehicle, then they'd have a comparatively safe "analog" for a compact car.