You Can Learn a Lot From a Dummy — the Pothole Dummy

CARS.COM — You’d have to be some kind of dummy to hit a pothole on purpose. Unless you’re the Pothole Dummy — in which case you hit a thousand.

Related: AAA: Potholes Are a Money Pit for Motorists

From April 4 to April 8, the unironically named Pothole Dummy car — piloted very ironically by Second City improv-comedy performer turned jumpsuit-clad crash-test dummy Daniel Strauss — struck a total of 1,110 potholes on the streets of Chicago. The 255-mile collision course may sound like a dumb thing to do, but the campaign’s message isn’t: Keep your car in proper working condition.

For the campaign, commissioned by Virginia-based Advance Auto Parts, Strauss cracked wise while driving straight into cracks and craters in the street as hard as possible within the bounds of safety. The Pothole Dummy car took the sort of beating to be expected by anyone who’s ever cringed after driving over a pothole.

The car tasked with taking this bumpy ride was a 2009 Dodge Charger with 100,000 miles on the odometer. It was fitted with new shocks and struts so that it was in optimal condition to absorb repeated blows for days on end.

By the end of the week, the Pothole Dummy averaged 4.35 potholes per mile. Not all craters were created equal, of course. Potholes were rated 1-5 on the “Skull Scale,” with five being the most bone-rattling.

I had the dubious pleasure of feeling the impact of a whole flurry of five-skull potholes while riding with the Pothole Dummy through one particular Chicago alleyway that looked like the aftermath of “Transformers: Dark of the Moon.” My jarring jaunt took place on a leg of the campaign’s fourth day, on which the Pothole Dummy covered a total of 43 miles and struck 331 craters.

From what I felt the inside the car as we traversed a veritable post-detonation minefield — bottoming out rather violently multiple times — it was surprising to learn how little severe damage the Charger sustained. John Gardner, Advance Auto Parts’ “technical guy” and host of Tech Garage on Discovery Communications’ Velocity pay-TV channel, said cumulative damage was minor and would cost only in the $100 to $200 range — if repairs were made in a timely fashion.

“But that would skyrocket very rapidly,” Gardner warned.

Undercarriage damage occurred to mounts, exhaust hangers and drive axles, and suspension components were knocked out of alignment, Gardner explained. Throughout the week, Strauss reported increasing rattles and wandering steering, conditions that left unaddressed could lead to tire wear and other problems.

“The total effect on the car was just a lot of looseness when driving,” he said.

To help car owners avoid danger and a costly repair bill, Gardner recommended two simple driveway tests to check for common pothole damage. Run a “dry park test” by turning the wheel back and forth while having someone outside the car look underneath to see if anything is loose or popping. For the “bounce test,” push up and down on the bumper to make sure it doesn’t bounce more than once or twice.

Meanwhile, the saying, “the best offense is a good defense,” applies aptly to potholes. Preventive maintenance that can help guard against pothole damage includes keeping tires inflated to the proper pressure as indicated in the owner’s manual (not the pressure printed on the tire sidewall; that’s the max pressure), and paying close attention to rattles-and-hums and going to a professional mechanic for a suspension system tune-up when you hear them.

Onboard equipment logged every pothole the Dummy hit, and the resulting red-dotted map showing the location of each made it look like the Windy City had come down with chicken pox. Pothole problems could’ve been a whole lot worse, though. This year’s strong El Niño resulted in a relatively mild winter across much of the nation, including Chicago, meaning fewer weather-related potholes — a lot fewer. The Chicago Tribune reported that the city of Chicago repaired about 40,000 potholes in January — less than half the number from previous years.

Still, that’s just one year’s reprieve from the pitfalls of recent history. AAA recently reported that pothole damage over the past five years has put U.S. drivers in the hole by $15 billion. The varied types of car trauma resulting from potholes, from tire punctures and bent wheels to suspension damage, cost drivers an estimated $300 per incident and landed potholes among motorists’ top concerns.