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Sapa is side-impact Star at UK Roads Crash Demonstration Day at MIRA  

Thursday 30th June 2011 saw the first public crash demonstrations to be held within the U.K. since 2009. The event was organised by UK Roads Ltd and held in association with MIRA, at their world renowned HAVOC test facility in Leicestershire.

A record number of some 260 attendees came to the event, including; specifiers, designers, several Highways Agency areas were represented, as well as a number of Police forces from across the country.

The main attraction to the event was that this would be the world’s first ever side-impact crash demonstration, to be conducted by a lighting column Manufacturer. To compliment the crash demonstrations there was an exhibition of related products and services on display inside a large marquee which included stands from: MIRA; JPCS; Tofco; FLI Structures; Highway Care; Gloucester Composites; Traffex/Road Expo; Brett Landscaping; NAL and Sapa. As well as the crash demonstrations themselves, other live demonstrations and exhibits took place outside the marquee including barrier products supplied by Highway Care and screw pile demonstrations conducted by FLI Structures. Video footage and still photographs of the day’s events are available on the UK Roads website. The main purpose of the event was to compare the damage sustained by the side impact of a vehicle, into a non-passively safe 12m steel lighting column, with a 15m NE3 Passively Safe column from Sapa. A Ford Fiesta was crashed at 35kph sideways into a passively safe 15m lighting column provided by Sapa. The column was mounted in a Retention Socket supplied and installed by NAL.

Despite the low speed and orientation of the impact, the 15m NE3 Passively Safe column from Sapa performed perfectly, shearing away as it is designed to do, causing very little damage or intrusion to the side of the car (and significantly less than that caused by the traditional steel column in the first demonstration). A spokesman for the police said “...It is very unlikely that any serious injury would have been sustained by the driver as a result...” The remaining portion of the column was subsequently removed with ease from the NAL Retention socket, which was then available to be re-used for a replacement column. This was an impressive display of how safe the Sapa range of columns are, and Sapa were thanked by the organizers for having the confidence in their product, and allowing MIRA to conduct this type of demonstration, saying that Sapa “... should be congratulated on its subsequent performance...”