The present work investigates the fracture toughness of a thick press hardened 22MnB5 steel sheet, in order to assess its applicability for truck safety parts. The fracture toughness is evaluated in the frame of the elastic plastic fracture mechanics (EPFM), in terms of essential work if fracture (EWF) and J-integral. Digital Image Correlation (DIC) measuring techniques are used to measure crack tip opening displacement and crack extension. It is shown that EWF presents some limitations for thick high strength metal sheet applications, making necessary the use of conventional EPFM procedures. Digital image analysis has shown to be very useful in fracture toughness characterization of thick press hardened steel sheets. The differences observed between different methodologies are discussed and results are compared to toughness values of different AHSS grades.