Why we test!

With more than 30 years experience in the development, safety testing and production of automotive equipment, Dahl Engineering possesses a wealth of knowledge in the areas of safety and regulations. As a supplier of components we are also able to offer close co-operation with regard to the development and testing/certification of components in the conjunction in which they are to be used.

Today, wheelchair tenders require that the wheelchair and restraint system is crash-tested together and thus lives up to ISO 7176-19. All WTORS must, according EU-regulation 2018/858 be tested in the car model and installation position in which it will be used. EU's medical device directive stipulate that the label of a CE-marked/approval wheelchair will be invalidated, and must be removed from the chair, if carrying out a significant change such as installing a docking system which has not been tested and CE-approved together with the wheelchair in question. Furthermore, it states - anyone who installs or adapts a non-approved equipment or installs it in a way that falls outside the wheelchair manufacturer's specifications, will be considered as the manufacturer and is responsible for the quality, safety, performance and documenting it. To avoid invalidating the CE-approval - the wheelchair and docking system must be tested and CE- approved together and instructions for the installation and combined use of the products must be described in the wheelchair manufacturer's manual.

We have at the moment crash-tested 140 wheelchairs according to ISO 10542-1:2012 and ISO 7176-19:2008 with Dahl Docking Station. Complying with the wheelchair manufacturers user- and installation guide when installing the Dahl Docking System, will ensure that the wheelchair manufacturers CE-marking will remain intact. As documentation, a manual with CE conformity statement and instructions for mounting the docking system on each model can be downloaded.

We also offer complete, TÜV approved installation kits for 4-point WTORS, which live up to and succeed EU-regulation 2018/858 for tie-down of wheelchairs of 85kg, 170kg and 200kg plus user.

Historically, 4 out of 5 wheelchairs fail the ISO-test first time they are being crash-tested. We have selected three examples from our work with crash-testing and development of tie-down equipment and wheelchairs, which give a realistic picture of what can happen during a collision of 48-50 km/h (see video on the right side). This underlines the necessity of testing wheelchairs, wheelchair tie-down equipment and occupant restraints in conjunction with each other.