No matter what causes a crash, when underride occurs, it is the victim who pays the price.
The Standards Australia recently-released proposed rear underrun rule says this in Commentary G of its STANDARDS AUSTRALIA Rear Underride Proposed Rule:
“Around twelve fatalities occur each year as a result of truck underruns in Australia. The injuries are usually horrific (see references in paragraph G7.2.1. for Rechnitzer & Foong [1991], Rechnitzer & Grzebieta [1991], Grzebieta & Rechnitzer [2001], Lambert & Rechnitzer [2002], Brumbelow [2011], & IIHS [2014]).
“Given that Australia has adopted a ‘Vision Zero’ road safety philosophy and the ‘Safe System Approach’ road safety strategy, all such foreseen fatalities need to be addressed if a design countermeasure can be implemented.
“The U.S. Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has also identified that the truck underrun fatalities and serious injuries are occurring as a result of inadequate truck underrun barriers and the lack of a crash performance test standard (IIHS 2014). They have rated a number of underrun barriers using a performance crash test protocol they recently developed.”
Clearly, they get it: if a fatality is predictable, and a solution exists which could prevent it, then it should be implemented!
See previous post on this topic: Good news from Australia: A Stronger Rear Underride Guard Rule Has Been Proposed!
