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Federal Motor Carrier Safety Requirement (FMCSR) 393.76(h) states that “a motor vehicle manufactured on or after July 1, 1971 and equipped with a sleeper berth must be equipped with a means of preventing ejection of the occupant of the sleeper berth during deceleration of the vehicle.” [1] Furthermore, this standard requires that “the restraint system must be designed, installed and maintained to withstand a minimum total force of 6,000 pounds applied toward the front of the vehicle and parallel to the longitudinal axis of the vehicle.” [1] Today, sleeper berths are equipped with sleeper restraint systems that function to contain the sleeper occupant inside the sleeper berth during reasonably foreseeable crashes. To assess the effectiveness of sleeper restraint systems, computer simulation models of the sleeper cab environment and these restraint systems were developed, with a simulated supine occupant in the sleeper.

Between June 2000 and September 2008 the University of North Florida, Institute of Police Technology and Management (UNF, IPTM) performed over 200 deceleration tests on over 70 commercial vehicles in a variety of configurations including various vehicle types, load conditions, and tests with and without the ABS system activated. The vehicle types tested were tractor w/van type trailer, tractor only (bobtail), straight box/service trucks, dump trucks, fire trucks, concrete mixing trucks, double trailers, articulated tankers, school and metro buses and articulated flatbeds. Vehicles were instrumented to record selected system performance parameters such as brake canister pressure rise, vehicle speed, position at brake pedal application, vehicle acceleration, etc. This paper reviews and summarizes the stopping distance data from these tests and provides insight into commercial vehicle stopping distance, drag factor for all of the tested vehicles and configurations.