SUV Driver Burns Car With Cigarette

The magazine ‘Auto Express’ used Chiltern Fire’s reaction to fire facilities and test engineers to carry out an investigation into the potential threat of car seats as a fire hazard for an article entitled: ‘Are you sitting on a time bomb?’ published in the 5-11 July issue this year.

The article stated that hundreds of drivers die each year as a result of fires in their vehicles. While UK domestic seating must meet some of the toughest fire regulations in the world, there is no European standard governing the flammability of car upholstery. Auto Express comissioned Chiltern Fire to test two car seats, one of cloth trim and the other in leather, compared against a readily available £99 armchair. Testing was carried out in Chiltern Fire’s single burning item test rig to analyse the properties of the flames, including total heat output and carbon monoxide content.

All three seats were subjected to two standard flammability tests. Firstly, a lit unfiltered cigarette was allowed to burn out at the rear of the seat; secondly, a small timber crib was ignited using a few drops of ethanol and left to burn in a similar position.

All the seats were almost unaffected by the burning cigarette. The domestic chair suffered minimal damage before the small crib extinguished itself. However, using the same size crib, both the fabric and leather car seats were alight within the first minute with flames in excess of one metre soon after and continuing until all the flammable material had been exhausted after about seven and nine minutes respectively. The burning materials produced between 400 and 560 kilowatts (a single bar electric fire produces 1kilowatt) at their peaks and thick smoke issued from both throughout the majority of testing.