Euro NCAP crash tests find truck underrun guards failing, linking the flaw to 400 deaths a year

A testing campaign by Euro NCAP has found serious weaknesses in the protection fitted to the back of European trucks and trailers, in a crash type linked to around 400 deaths a year across the EU and UK. 

The crash in question is a rear underrun: where a car collides with the back of a slowing or stationary heavy goods vehicle and slides beneath the trailer bed instead of striking a structure its crumple zones and airbags are designed to absorb. 

The project was initiated and supported by National Highways in the UK, based on its own collision data.

Euro NCAP identified two separate failures. First, the driver-assistance systems relied on to brake automatically before such a crash happens do not reliably see the back of a real trailer, particularly on older-generation systems. Euro NCAP estimates it will take upwards of 15 years for most cars on the road to reliably avoid this crash type through automatic braking alone. 

Second, when a crash does happen, physical crash testing found that the rear guards fitted to trailers meeting the EU and UK’s current mandatory standard, UN Regulation 58, failed to stop cars sliding underneath in ways that would have been fatal. A trailer built to the voluntary US IIHS TOUGHGUARD standard, tested under the same conditions, performed as intended.

Euro NCAP is calling on EU and UK regulators to strengthen UN Regulation 58 to match the US benchmark, and is urging trailer manufacturers to develop voluntary retrofit kits for the fleet already on the road.

ETSC agrees that the standard should be tightened but also says the European Commission should consider a legal requirement to retrofit the existing HGV and trailer fleet.

Photo: Euro NCAP