Road vehicles - Restraining of fitted furniturein delivery vans. Requirements and test methods

Each day, several million light utility vehicles: vans, light vans or delivery vans, are used on the roads by companies to transport the materials and goods required for their activity. During a frontal road collision, an unlashed load in the rear of the van is projected violently towards the occupant compartment and thus becomes a projectile likely to injure or even kill the occupants of the vehicle.
The installation of a partitioning system physically separating the loading space from the occupants is a partial protective measure to deal with this risk. Reproduction in the laboratory of standardised frontal shocks has shown that the partitioning system cannot whatever the case restrain the entire payload of the vehicle. Equipping a delivery van with a partitioning system is therefore necessary but not enough. It therefore remains essential to restrain the materials and goods transported in the loading space, in particular by placing them in safe fitted furniture.
The aim of the present protocol is to define a test method and the requirements regarding load restraining for furniture fitted in the loading space of delivery vans.