Currently in Europe there is no required legislation concerning the strength of HGV cabs in order to protect the occupants during a crash. Although some regulations and standards exist these have not been developed in a comprehensive manner to address typical real world accidents. Through a three year project, that included accident investigation, computer simulations and cab testing, a new standard has been proposed for improving HGV cab strength. A pendulum impact test addresses the frontal impact accident types and a quasi-static oblique roof crush test addresses the rollover accidents. Each test used a 95th percentile Hybrid III dummy to define the occupant residual space. The proposed standard will potentially form the basis of future European legislation regarding HGV cab safety. For the covering abstract see ITRD E825082.
Abstract