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Clean Hydrogen Partnership

Road collision with CGH2 hydrogen trailer

Event

Event ID
1107
Quality
Description
A coach with 42 passengers crashed into a truck containing hydrogen. The truck was hit from the back, where the gas control system are usually placed. Despite some damage to the rear protection structure, there was no loss of confinement and hydrogen leak. According to the online news, the truck was transporting liquid hydrogen, but this appears an inaccuracy, by looking at the pictures of the trailer.
Three coach passengers reported minor injuries.
Event Initiating system
Classification of the physical effects
No Hydrogen Release
Nature of the consequences
Macro-region
Europe
Country
Austria
Date
Main component involved?
Cgh2 Tube Trailer
How was it involved?
No Release
Initiating cause
Impact, Rollover, Crash
Root causes
Root CAUSE analysis
The INITIATING CAUSE was tentatively attributed to a micro-sleep of the driver

Theoretically, a ROOT CAUSE could be indetified in management factors, in case the driver was not allowed to respect the legal breaks in service. The news available however do not provide details which could support this thesis. In absence of further details, the root cause is assigned to a human error, as done in most of the road collsions and crashes.

Facility

Application
Hydrogen Transport And Distribution
Sub-application
CGH2 tube trailer
Hydrogen supply chain stage
Hydrogen Transport (No additional details provided)
All components affected
trailer
Location type
Open
Operational condition

Emergency & Consequences

Number of injured persons
3
Number of fatalities
0
Environmental damage
0
Post-event summary
The coach was badly damaged by the impact but cargo did not lose confinement.
Three of the passengers were slightly injured, with one hospitalisation.

Lesson Learnt

Lesson Learnt

Road crashes will always happen. In general, the rear of compressed gas trailers is the most delicate area, because the gas pressure control system and connections for gas loading/unloading operation are placed there.
It is very therefore important to design transporters able to keep containment under the worse crash scenarios.

Event Nature

Release type
gas
Involved substances (% vol)
H2 100%
Presumed ignition source
No release

References

Reference & weblink

Krone Zeitung<br />
https://www.krone.at/3390394<br />
(accessed July 2024)

JRC report based on own collection of information

JRC assessment