In The Netherlands the Institute for Road Safety Research SWOV, at the request of the Ministry of Transport and Waterways, has been investigating the dangers liable to be caused to car occupants in impacts with road furniture. During this research, frontal and sideways impacts tests were made with private cars against lighting columns. In practice, although frontal impacts with obstacles are over twice as frequent as sideways impacts, the consequences of sideways impacts are generally more serious and for this reason frontal impact tests alone are inadequate. Since no suitable equipment existed for carrying out sideways impacts tests, this had to be specially designed by the Road Vehicles Research Institute TNO. Its special feature is that the vehicle can first be made to slip sideways before hitting the constructed obstacle. The equipment can be used not only for impact tests with obstacles, but also for rollover tests, for instance in testing car bodies or studying occupants' movements. (Author/publisher)
Abstract