Dekra conducted a crash test involving a bus with unsecured load. The effects of such an event are dramatic. Despite this, for many companies and individuals securing the load properly is “an unnecessary fuss”.
According to the article 61 paragraph 3 of the Act of 20 June 1997 – Road Traffic Law (Dz. U. of 2017 pos. 128), “a load placed in a vehicle should be secured against changing its arrangement and making excessive noise.” Unfortunately, the provisions do not specify exactly how it should look like. There are also entrepreneurs who believe this procedure is a waste of time.
Dekra, the biggest German and the third largest company in the World carrying out audits and inspections in the automotive industry conducted crash tests which show the effects of not securing the load in a transport vehicle. The side door have been removed from so that they are more visible.
Dekra analysts decided to check how a crash of a bus and vehicles standing in a traffic jam would look like. Transport vehicle with inadequately secured load drives into standing passenger cars with speed of 58 km/h. “Such accidents are very frequent on highways” stresses Uwe Hagemann, Dekra analysts from the Bielefeld branch. Drivers are less attentive there because they, for example, use their phones. During the test in the vehicle there was a washing machine, tyres and barbell but all of them were unsecured. As expected, during the impact the load did not remain in place. The washing machine slammed into the front passenger seat, the tyres flew through the windshield and the barbell thrust into the convertible with which the bus collided. Certainly, neither the transport vehicle’s passenger nor its driver would be alive after such an accident. Also the driver of the passenger car in the front would have little chance of survival.
