Safe Laboratories

SAFE Laboratories (Safety Analysis & Forensic Engineering) is an independent automotive safety research facility and testing laboratory headquartered at 475 Pine Avenue in Goleta, California, approximately 90 minutes north of Los Angeles. Operating under the trade name Safe Research, the laboratory was established around 1997 and has built its reputation on the precise intersection of regulatory compliance testing, forensic engineering, and real-world crash investigation. The firm serves automotive manufacturers, insurers, attorneys, and government agencies requiring objective, scientifically rigorous analysis of vehicle safety systems and accident dynamics.

The laboratory occupies a purpose-built 34,000-square-foot facility that houses a dedicated dynamic crash-testing laboratory, an extensive array of component test fixtures, ample vehicle storage, a fully equipped inspection bay, and an on-site machine shop capable of mechanical fabrication and disassembly. This integrated infrastructure allows SAFE Laboratories to design, build, and operate specialized test equipment in-house — a capability that underpins its ability to reproduce the complex dynamics of real-world crashes with high fidelity. The machine shop is particularly valuable for constructing surrogate and exemplar hardware and for preparing vehicles and components for controlled destructive testing.

Dynamic crash testing forms the cornerstone of SAFE Laboratories' capabilities. The facility can execute full-scale vehicle crash tests as well as sled-based impact simulations covering frontal, rear, and side impact configurations, with delta-V levels reaching 35 mph and beyond. High-speed rollover excursion testing is a specialty area, with the laboratory conducting controlled roll sequences to study occupant kinematics and containment system performance during tripped and untripped rollover events. Vehicle-to-vehicle impact testing allows engineers to replicate collision configurations observed in accident reconstructions, providing objective data for both regulatory compliance analysis and litigation support.

Beyond full-vehicle crash testing, SAFE Laboratories offers a comprehensive suite of component-level and subsystem-level test capabilities. Airbag deployment tests characterize inflator performance, bag geometry, and occupant interaction timing under a variety of conditions. Seat back strength testing evaluates structural integrity under rearward loading consistent with FMVSS (Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards) requirements. Restraint system evaluations — covering lap belts, shoulder belts, and child restraint interfaces — assess load paths, pretensioner function, and energy-management behavior. Additional services include inverted drop tests, sliding drop tests, head impact and helmet impact evaluations, animal impact simulations, occupant-to-compartment impact studies, and roll occupant excursion studies.

Surrogate and exemplar testing is another significant capability area. SAFE Laboratories' engineers procure, inspect, and analyze production and exemplar hardware to establish baseline performance parameters, identify defects or deviations from design intent, and compare suspect components against exemplar benchmarks. This work is frequently performed in connection with product liability litigation, where establishing whether a specific vehicle system performed within its designed parameters at the time of a crash is central to the legal dispute.

The laboratory's engineering team brings together more than 60 combined years of experience in automotive engineering and safety analysis. The firm's founders — Steve Forrest, Steve Meyer, and Managing Partner Brian Herbst — have each served as expert witnesses in automotive injury-related trials and have authored numerous technical papers that have contributed to improvements in vehicle safety regulations. Throughout their careers, the SAFE Laboratories team has investigated and studied thousands of real-world crashes, creating an empirical knowledge base that informs every controlled test and analytical engagement. Brian Herbst, a licensed Professional Engineer who serves as Senior Engineer and President, is recognized in the expert-witness community for his expertise in accident reconstruction, seatbelt design, and automotive safety engineering.

SAFE Laboratories is best positioned as a partner for clients who require independent, technically credible analysis in high-stakes automotive safety contexts. Whether the engagement involves pre-litigation investigation of a rollover fatality, compliance testing against FMVSS standards for an automotive OEM, research into occupant injury biomechanics, or reconstruction of a complex multi-vehicle collision, the laboratory offers the rare combination of full-scale crash infrastructure, component-level test fixtures, and deep forensic engineering expertise all under one roof in Goleta, California.