The question ‘how many migrants can you fit in a van?’ may sound like the beginning of a dark joke, but the answer now appears to be available.

The video below, believed to be showing a road in Austria, illustrates just how many migrants can be crammed into a Transit-style van, and the number will surprise you.

The video serves as a warning to border guards across the continent on the lookout for those attempting to traffic migrants across the borderless Schengen Area. Not only will immigration services have to be on the lookout for larger trucks and containers, they will also need to regard smaller vehicles with suspicion.

Another serious issue relates to the safety of the migrants themselves. Although vans like those illustrated appear safer to hide in than lorry containers, the tragic consequences of which were seen in the decomposing bodies of 71 migrants found in Austria recently, they pose another risk.

The video shows the van coming to a halt because it has crashed with one of the road barriers. On this occasion all the migrants inside got out of the van in what looks like an uninjured state, but it was a relatively minor crash.

Had the van been involved in a more serious collision then the migrants packed into the interior, which included a number of children carried from it by adults, could have been killed. Pictures of dead adults and children on the roads of Europe would likely have a similar impact to those recently seen on the beaches of Turkey.