The Retrofit Question: Should we add underride protection to existing trucks OR decide to let people die?

Some might be hesitant about the comprehensive underride protection legislation mainly out of concern over the Retrofitting Requirement of the STOP Underrides! Bill.

Ask me if I would be willing to compromise and take out the retrofit requirement! How many people might die as a result? The trailer which we crashed into is probably still on the road with a weak rear underride guard. Along with millions of others.

Why is it that they are being allowed to “get away with murder” just because it will cost the industry some money to strengthen these rear guards?

Just imagine for a moment that somebody had done something in 2008 to introduce a Comprehensive Underride Protection Bill. But let’s say that they decided not to require retrofitting;  so only new trailers would be improved starting in perhaps 2012.

So the Great Dane trailer built in 2007, which we crashed into on May 4, 2013, would not have been required to be retrofitted. It would have been left with its original rear underride guard which was designed to meet the 1998 federal (current) standard and, therefore, would have been weak and ineffective.

My daughters still would have been killed! They would not have been protected from Death by Underride — despite the fact that a solution would have existed which might have prevented their untimely deaths.

So, ask me again. . . “Do you want to compromise and take the retrofit requirement out of the STOP Underrides! Bill?” What do you think?

After all, we have decades of deaths and neglect to make up.

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