What is the expected extent of damage to the TTMA-100 in a typical crash and what will it take to repair the damaged trailer?
Crash test results indicated that there is no damage to the TTMA-100 in a 5-mph impact by a mid-sized automobile. For low-speed nuisance hits, it is expected that the damage to the trailer would be limited to the shear pins holding the mandrels to the energy absorbing tubes. It is a relatively easy process to replace the shear pins and users can actually perform the repair in the field. For more severe impacts, the best available information indicates that more than 85 percent of the crashes would result in damage to only the first set of energy absorbing tubes. This 12 percentage is likely to be conservative since smaller and lighter cars would not reach the splice connecting the first set of energy absorbing tubes to the front tubes of the A-frame, even for a high-speed impact with a stopped support truck. For a moving operation, even impacts by heavy passenger vehicles would not reach the splice since the tow vehicle is moving forward slowly. While exact statistics are not available
