Filed under:
Sedan,
Truck,
Government/Legal,
Safety,
Videos,
Work,
Chevrolet
The
Insurance Institute for Highway Safety is always looking for new ways to make America's highways safer, and this latest test checks out the crashworthiness of one of the most overlooked vehicles on the road: tractor trailers. Pointing out design flaws inherent in semi trailers during rear-end collisions, the IIHS performed three different tests on eight of the most popular semi trailers on the market including a full-width impact, a 50-percent overlap (where only half of the car makes contact with the trailer) and a narrower overlap where only 30 percent of the car hits the trailer.
In the tests, which were run at 35 miles per hour using a
2010 Chevrolet Malibu, all of the trailers safely prevented the vehicle from underriding - going underneath the trailer - during the full-width crash. Compared to the results from this same test just
two years ago, it's a big improvement in safety. In the 50-percent test, only one of the trailer's underride guards failed allowing the rear edge of the trailer to impact the passenger compartment, which would have most likely killed the driver. In the 30 percent overlap test, only one trailer managed to prevent the crash car from going under the trailer. The safest trailer, produced by a company called Manac, had the underride guard beams pushed out to the edges of the trailer providing additional strength and support. All of the trailers passed US and Canadian crash standards.
Scroll down for the crash-test video as well as a press release from IIHS.
Continue reading IIHS calls out big rigs for dangerous rear underride guards [w/video]
IIHS calls out big rigs for dangerous rear underride guards [w/video] originally appeared on
Autoblog on Mon, 18 Mar 2013 12:30:00 EST. Please see our
terms for use of feeds.
Permalink |
Email this |
Comments
More...
Study: IIHS calls out big rigs for dangerous rear underride guards [w/video]
