Accidents during the transportation of dangerous goods often have serious consequences: the socio-economic cost of a tanker accident may be twice as high as that of a "normal" goods-transport accident due to the dangerous goods escaping and the environmental damage caused by this. However, compared with the accident occurrence in the transportation of general goods, accidents involving dangerous goods are rare: around eight out of 1,000 personal injury accidents involving a goods vehicle are classified as accidents involving dangerous goods.
Source: © pb press / Fotolia
One problematic aspect of these accidents is that the cargo is often inadequately secured. This can be seen through analysis of "serious" accidents involving dangerous goods vehicles in which people are injured due to the dangerous goods or in which more than 100 kg or litres of the dangerous goods are released. As approximately 29% of dangerous goods transported are "poisonous", it is particularly important that the cargo is correctly secured and the vehicles are correctly labelled.
The BASt has already investigated and analysed accident occurrence regarding the transportation of dangerous goods on several occasions. As well as analysing the data of the official road-traffic accident statistics, these investigations also included extensive special surveys of the dangerous goods vehicles, the dangerous goods which are transported and the environmental damage caused.