In 1990, the SWOV Institute for Road Safety Research performed a number of simulated collisions, using a passenger car and a lorry, against the steel Dutch Ministry of Public Works (RWS) barrier. In 1993, the German Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt) conducted two trials against the steel RWS barrier on actual scale, one using a passenger car and the other using a lorry. The results of both trials were used to verify and perhaps to further optimise the 1990 mathematical translation of the steel RWS barrier into the VEhicle DYnamics And Crash dynamics (VEDYAC) computer program. Both BASt reports concerning the trials on actual scale lack detailed data (numeric values) relating to the collision results. The distortion shown with the passenger car in the computer simulation is equivalent to the distortion measured with the trial on actual scale. The location where this maximal distortion is measured is the same in both cases. This was also true for the 10 ton lorry. The simulated distortion with this lorry corresponds well to the distortion measured with the trial on actual scale. The conclusion is that the data set of the steel RWS barrier used in the computer simulation for both collision types enables an accurate description of what actually occurred.
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