Deceleration Testing on Various Driving Surfaces for Off-Road Vehicle Operation

Recreational Off-Highway Vehicles (ROVs) also referred to as “side-by-side” vehicles are involved in accidents / crashes due to driver error. This can often be attributed to an operator’s inexperience and failure to differentiate vehicle handling characteristics from that of a traditional automobile. Decelerating testing of ROVs on various surfaces has not been published for these types of vehicles. This work presents test data for use in accident reconstruction and examines the dynamic performance of two exemplar ROVs on various driving surfaces including asphalt, packed dirt, loose gravel and loose, deep sand. Exemplar vehicles, specifically a 4-person “pure-sport” ROV and a single bench utility ROV, are used to gather practical deceleration performance data. Deceleration data comparing tests with fully-locked brakes to tests where the operator manually modulates the brakes to achieve maximum deceleration without brake lockup are also included. The data presented herein is particularly valuable for analysis of ROV skid marks.