A van spends many hours on the road, all year round, so the safety of both driver and equipment is a top priority. In this blog, we will explain why you should always choose crash-tested shelving for vans and other interior products for transport vehicles.
The road ー a risky place to work
Spending a lot of time behind the wheel increases the likelihood of being in a traffic accident. Every year, around 20-50 million people are injured in road traffic crashes worldwide. Craftsmen spend many hours on the road, often with heavy loads and equipment in the van.
System Edström has more than 60 years of experience in developing, manufacturing, and selling van interiors. For us, safety is a key issue. We have chosen to crash-test our van interiors, including our shelving for vans, even though this isn’t a legal requirement.
Vehicle shelving systems play an important role in making the mobile workplace as spacious as possible. In the event of a collision, even at low speeds, the shelves and everything placed on them risk causing serious damage to both driver and interior.
Three reasons for choosing crash-tested shelving for vans
- Provides a safer work environment
- Reduces the risk of damage to loads, materials, and equipment
- Reduces the risk of damage to the van’s interior
As a seller of van shelving kits, we have a responsibility to ensure that our systems are safe. The van interior is not just functional storage, it is a safety feature of the van in itself. System Edström tests according to crash test standard NS286 to ensure that all our vehicle shelving systems make the working day as safe as possible.
How System Edström’s vehicle shelving systems are tested
For our latest crash tests, we have chosen to test our van shelving kits and systems at RISEー Research Institutes of Sweden. RISE has collaboration programs with industry, the public sector and academia around the world.
The test procedure for shelving for vans takes place on a crash sled, in exactly the same way it would be installed in a vehicle.
- The shelf is loaded with accurately calculated ballast weights that are cut to 80 % of the storage unit.
- The crash sled is then transported into a concrete wall at 31 MPH. The g-force is about 25G at this time.
- The interior is subjected to a second blow from behind, fractions of a second after the initial impact, just the way it would occur in a car crash.
- The result of the crash-test is analysed.
For the products to be approved, the interior must only move within a certain specified dimension, and no loads or parts may fly off the shelves.
How System Edström ensures secure van shelving kits
Our years of experience and results from our crash tests have given us knowledge of how shelving for vans should be designed to be as safe as possible ー both in the event of a crash and in user experience. Therefore, our shelves have 65 mm high barriers around the sides to ensure that your equipment remains in place. The upper shelf has a 180-degree overlap for extra stability.
If you would like to install our crash-tested shelving for vans in a single van or in a whole fleet, contact one of our approved dealers.