HGV safety flaw kills 400 car drivers per year, but US tech could help

Experts are calling for a crucial change to UK and EU laws surrounding trucks and trailers that could save the lives of as many as 400 car drivers across Europe per year. 

The move follows an investigation supported by Britain’s National Highways which uncovered dangerous design oversights in HGVs and flaws in ageing ADAS software that frequently result in so-called ‘underrun impacts’ – where the impacting car slides underneath the much larger truck and/or whatever it’s towing.

Analysing crash data from the UK’s Strategic Road Network, as well as crash test results at its own facilities, industry safety body Euro NCAP says it’s uncovered what it describes as a “double failure of road safety” when it comes to ADAS effectiveness and HGV design. The former, NCAP says, is down to how many ageing car safety systems fail to consistently detect the rear ends of lorries and trailers.

The study compared ADAS performance against the Global Vehicle Target (GVT) – a realistic, but soft, dummy to represent a full-size car – as well as real commercial trailers. Across several scenarios, Euro NCAP found that while the test vehicles’ ADAS software detected the GVT every time, they didn’t always do so when it came to the HGV trailers.

This is perhaps even more alarming when you consider the mechanical failsafe mandated in Europe to prevent underruns often fails to prevent catastrophic results. Euro NCAP tested trailers with Rear Underrun Protection Systems (RUPS) built to Europe's latest mandatory standard, UN ECE R58.03, by performing a crash test alongside a new car which had been awarded a full five-star safety rating by the organisation. 

In a real-life scenario, the outcome of the 35mph impact would almost certainly have been fatal, with NCAP describing how the trailer bed “sliced directly through the  passenger compartment, tearing the side out of the vehicle structure, and inflicting fatal head and neck injuries to the crash test dummy”.

The reason for this is that the rear underrun protection of the trailer does not have sufficient structural integrity to allow proper deformation of the car, allowing it to slide underneath and thus providing occupants with little to no protection.

At the same time, however, the team performed the same test but swapped the EU-spec trailer out for one configured to the US’ voluntary IIHS TOUGHGUARD standard. In this instance, thanks to the extra reinforcements this standard requires, the car was able to deform as designed, with the crash dummy remaining intact and the door still able to be opened.

With this in mind, Euro NCAP is now calling on the UK and EU to match its standards to mirror those of TOUGHGUARD. Describing the findings as “grave cause for concern”, director of strategic development, Matthew Avery, said: “The legislation behind Europe’s truck and trailer safety needs to be updated as a matter of urgency to help prevent this type of impact that can prove potentially fatal.”

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