The crash test queen

For the past 30 years Joanne Smith has been paid to smash up cars and learn from the wreckage

- GREG POTTS

Joanne Smith is responsible for a car crash almost every single day. Sometimes even twice a day.

Thankfully, she isn’t some kind of West Midlands-based Pastor Maldonado. Being responsible for pretty much all of the passive safety crash testing that takes place at Horiba MIRA in Nuneaton, Smith smashes up cars for a living.

“It’ll be 30 years in January that I’ve worked here,” she says. “It has completely changed in that time. When I first started as a test engineer most cars were only just getting airbags and seatbelts were just developing to have pretensioners. The roads were a very different place.”

In the early days of her career, it wasn’t always so pleasant to see how the sausage was made. “I used to drive an original Rover Mini. Now there is a car that didn’t crash well. At the time they were putting the driver’s airbag into the steering wheel. I remember watching the crash test quite late one night and afterwards I didn’t want to get in the car to drive home.

“I’ll also always remember doing a test with an estate car where child dummies were sat in the jump seats in the boot. They had seatbelts on, but we did a rear impact and that was horrible. Every now and then you will see a test that makes you feel quite sick.”