The real-life accidents on this page are comparisons to the environments that the regulatory hypothetical accidents protect against.

The collision forces or fire temperature and duration that were present in each accident are similar to the conditions that spent fuel casks are designed to survive.

The sources of images (above) are accident accounts with photographic records that are publicly available on the World Wide Web. Those that best illustrate the various forces to which a package may be subjected in the course of an accident were selected.

Example: The grade-crossing accident illustrates a severe realistic free drop environment. The train struck the truck at around 60 mph and was so massive that it was unable to stop until it had traveled about 800 feet beyond the impact point. Had the truck been carrying a Type B RAM package when it was struck by the train, the force on the package would have been less than that to which it was subjected in the drop test.