What is BS EN 12767- Safety of support structures for road equipment about?
BS EN 12767 is a European Standard that discusses passive safety of support structures for road equipment. It details best practices to minimize the severity of injury to vehicle occupants of a car in an impact with support structures of road equipment.
BS EN 12767 specifies performance test procedures to determine the passive safety properties of support structures such as lighting columns, signposts, signal supports, structural elements, foundations, detachable products, and any other components used to support a particular item of equipment on the roadside.
Note: BS EN 12767 does not apply to road restraint systems.
Who is BS EN 12767- Safety of support structures for road equipment for?
BS EN 12767 on passive safety of support structures for road equipment is useful for:
- Road equipment and installation manufacturers
- Construction product manufacturers
- Product designers
- Design and testing engineers
- Traffic and road safety authorities
- National and local road authorities
- Testing laboratories
Why should you use BS EN 12767- Safety of support structures for road equipment?
The severity of accidents for the occupant(s) of a vehicle is affected (in part) by the performance of the support structures for items of road equipment under impact. Based on safety considerations, support structures can be designed to behave in controlled ways to reduce the overall risk. Passive safety is intended to lessen the severity of injuries to vehicle occupants in the event of a collision with road equipment support structures.
In this regard, BS EN 12767 provides:
- Test methods for determining impact safety performance
- Methods to handle the data resulting from the impact tests
- Technical background about passive safety that can be used in the product standard
The test procedure under BS EN 12767 includes guidelines:
- For test item selection, test parameters, detailed test methods with different test conditions, the data to record, and requirements for reporting
- To assess the performance within families of products (called “product families”) and for modified products (called “changed versions”)
BS EN 12767 provides a common basis for the vehicle impact testing of items of road equipment support structures.
In order to help you to evaluate the risk in case of a product modification, BS EN 12767 introduces virtual testing through the definition of procedures for verification, validation, and development of numerical models. Based on the evaluation of the performance of each tested support structure, National and Local road authorities will be able to specify the performance class of an item of road equipment support structure in terms of the likely effect on the occupants of a vehicle in impact with the structure.
What’s changed since the last update?
BS EN 12767:2019 supersedes BS EN 12767:2007, which is withdrawn. BS EN 12767:2019 includes some technical changes with respect to BS EN 12767:2007. These include:
- Incorporation of the Regulation (EU) No 305/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 9 March 2011 laying down harmonized conditions for the marketing of construction products and repealing Council Directive 89/106/EEC terminology
- Introduction of a push-pull test to enable a comparison to be made between the backfills used in the test and those on-site
- Harmonization of the boundary values for occupant safety (ASI and THIV) independent of the energy absorption class
- Replacement of the occupant safety class by an alphanumeric character instead of a number to make a clear distinction with the old (EN 12767:2007) approach. Now, NE-C, LE-C, and HE-C have the same occupant safety. The best occupant safety is achieved for A
- Introduction of collapse modes to classify if test items become detached or do not become detached
- Introduction of direction classes to take into account any sensitiveness to impact angle
- Improved test description, including installation manual and translation of roof deformation into a measurable value, to reduce the influence of the vehicle structure on the test results
- Introduction of an extra test at 50 km/h for cases where the test-item is not activated at low speed an explanation of the definition of “activated” is also given
- Better rules for the determination of families (product families) based on the tested limit(s)
- Introduction of a risk assessment approach, in line with the EN 1317-1:2010, for assessing changes of aversion, and the use of (for example) virtual testing in this
- Possibility to declare, under certain conditions, intermediate speed classes