Scania’s truck crash tests are intense

Named after Sweden’s southernmost province, Scania may be owned by the Volkswagen Group today, but it’s also the same truck company that merged with Saab back in 1969. With that move, it became a conglomerate that produced fighter jets like the Saab 37 Viggen, tough fire engines (that continue to be part of its business to this day), and the mighty Saab 99, of course, the car that went turbocharged in series production as early as in 1978.

Being a Swedish vehicle manufacturer comes with obligations. I vividly remember being at Volvo’s headquarters in Gothenburg, Sweden, a few years ago, only to see a then brand-new XC90 being driven into a ditch at high speed… not because the government demanded it, but because Volvo believes the physical crashing of more cars than the industry average is necessary in the name of their cutting-edge safety research.

Scania appears to be doing the same with its trucks. While the law allows a company to use different cabs for each individual test phase to attain compliance with European Union law EC R29, which mandates protection of the cabin occupants in an industrial vehicle, Scania still does all three tests with a single truck. To comply with its internal policy, Scania also crashes long haulers at high speeds, along with rolling over one crew cab after the other—which still manage to drive away under their own power. Then, the regulations can follow as the Swedes look into the question of autonomous mining trucks.

You know “Swedish Impact Test” is just Scania’s internal code for reindeer…