Van safety put to the test, the results are rough
Thursday, 17 December 2020
ANCAP, the body responsible for testing the safety of new vehicles in Australia and New Zealand, has broadened its subjects to include commercial vans for the first time. The results aren’t pretty.
Fifteen light and medium/heavy commercial vans were put to the test by sister assessment programme, Euro NCAP, to evaluate their collision avoidance, or ADAS, capability. The comparison tests were encouraged by the rise in the use of commercial vans on Australian and New Zealand roads as a result of the Covid-19-fuelled boom in home delivery services and online purchases.
Three years ago, ANCAP began testing active safety systems including low and high-speed autonomous emergency braking (AEB), lane support systems (LSS), speed assistance systems (SAS) and occupant detection systems.
Since, 69 vehicles have been tested and rated but, due to generally longer produce life-cycles for commercial vehicles, and the current scope of the ANCAP safety rating system covering passenger vehicles, SUVs and LCVs up to a GVM of 3.5 tonne, many of the commercial vans currently on the market are unrated, or have ANCAP ratings that pre-date the introduction of ADAS testing.
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Vans don’t necessarily crash more often than any other type of vehicle but due to their more “aggressive” design, other vehicles involved usually come off worse.
“With the increasing number of van movements, the risk to other road users – in other vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists – increases, so it is important fleets and van operators are aware of the heightened risk these vehicles pose to others,” said ANCAP Director for Communications & Advocacy, Rhianne Robson.
Now to the nitty gritty – ANCAP and Euro NCAP found just two vans achieved an overall collision avoidance rating of gold – the Toyota Hiace and the Ford Transit. Five scored a silver rating and three a bronze.
The silver winners were the Ford Transit Custom, the VW Transporter, Peugeot Expert, Mercedes-Benz Sprinter and VW Crafter. Bronze vans include the Peugeot Boxer, Fiat Ducato and Mercedes-Benz Vito.
The Hyundai iLoad, Renault Trafic, Mitsubishi Express, Renault Master and Iveco Daily were stamped with ‘Not Recommended’ due to their poor active safety specification. That’s a bit of a worry, considering November saw 50 more iLoad’s on our roads and 36 new Express vans. All models tested are 2020-specification.
Year to date, the top vans in New Zealand are the Toyota Hiace (1737 units), Ford Transit (1080 units), Fiat Ducato (684 units) and Hyundai iLoad (509 units).
“Commercial vans generally operate with higher levels of exposure and hold a much longer economic life-span due to their primary commercial-use and goods-carrying function, and this makes their active safety capability arguably even more critical than that of passenger cars.”
“ANCAP’s influence over the passenger vehicle and SUV segments has seen a marked improvement in safety specification over the years – with great gains made with the fitting of active collision avoidance systems, and this analysis will now place a spotlight on the previously peripheral segment of the market which has noticeably lagged.”
“Regardless of segment or intended use, we urge fleet buyers and consumers to prioritise the purchase and use of vehicles with active safety features,” Robson said.