NHTSA closed the Public Comment Period on the Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) for side underride guards on July 20, 2023. NHTSA asked commenters to respond to these nine questions. Here’s where the comments are posted: Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for Side Underride Guards. To make it easier to read through the thousands of comments, I’m providing pdfs and/or links to many of them — although it’s not an exhaustive compilation.
The majority of comments (over 1,000) posted from June 16 through June 23 were from individuals and organizations which support the requests in the Public Comment from the League of American Bicyclists – calling for pedestrians and bicyclists to be included in the data for side guard regulatory analysis. (Motorcyclists are vulnerable to underride as well.)
According to the federal rulemaking process, the next step is for NHTSA (and that will include the Advisory Committee on Underride Protection)to begin reviewing and evaluating the comments which have been submitted from the public. Now is the time for the development of a recommendation to the Secretary of Transportation as to whether a side guard regulation would be cost effective.
In other words, now is the time to finally determine that safety is an acceptable cost of doing business and Death By Underride is an unacceptable, unreasonable, and preventable risk for all road users. At least, that’s what I think.
Words have power. Words convey meaning. Let’s choose words which will enhance understanding and catalyze life preserving action.
Take the word #underride for example. How many people realize that an underride guard is a “simple” engineering device which — if properly designed and installed — can prevent a passenger vehicle, as well as pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorcyclists, from ending up under a truck in the event of a collision?
For over a century now, despite industry and government awareness of the problem, underride tragedies have been allowed, for the most part, to go unchecked. Amazingly, a 1915 patent for a safety device to prevent side underride predates the first patent for a traffic signal filed in 1922:
Garrett Morgan, the inventor of the first traffic signal, filed a patent on Feb 27, 1922. Just think how many lives have been saved by this simple device. @MaryandAnnaLeah@SecretaryPete wild to think that the first underride guard patents predated the traffic signal patent. pic.twitter.com/oe2pVtCklI
“Safety Device for Motor Vehicle” to prevent side underride, 1915 Patent
Unfortunately, there has been too much confusion about the gaping space below a truck’s floor which leads to horrifying injuries when there are collisions with the front, side, or rear of a large truck — not to mention too little action taken to correct that dangerous design. One misunderstanding that I’d like to clear up relates to side underride.
Lateral Protection Device (LPD) is a term coined for equipment installed on the side of a truck to prevent Vulnerable Road Users (pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorcyclists) from being swept under. It is not designed to stop a passenger vehicle from going under. A Side Skirt is a relatively flimsy device, which is designed to improve aerodynamics and save fuel; it is not designed to prevent underride. A Side Underride Guard (SUG) or Side Impact Guard (SIG), on the other hand, is designed to prevent a passenger vehicle from going under a truck. Thankfully, it will also protect Vulnerable Road Users from being killed under a truck. And, by the way, it adds to the fuel savings of side skirts.
That is why a SUG or SIG can rightfully be called a LPD+; it does what an LPD is meant to do — and so much more. Why on earth would we require or install equipment on the U.S. fleet which is less effective than a LPD+ that is designed to protect All Road Users? *
Unbelievably, all we have at present is a patchwork quilt of underride standards, or lack thereof, in this country. It’s high time that our nation’s highway traffic safety agency step up to the plate. @NHTSAgov, make wise and timely use of the Advisory Committee on Underride Protection to provide guidance which appropriately defines and regulates underride devices — thus fulfilling your mission to reduce emissions and save lives. Otherwise, we can expect more of the same: Death By Underride day after day, year after year.
* The term LPD+ was suggested by Garrett Mattos on December 2, 2022, during a Zoom discussion among underride experts and advocates collaborating together as TEAM Underride to advance the implementation of engineering devices to prevent Death By Underride for All Road Users.
In 2020, I became aware of further proof that underride regulatory analysis was both flawed and non-transparent. For some reason, in 2017, the FMCSA contracted with the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center to carry out a Study of Truck Side Guards to Reduce Pedestrian Fatalities. Originally the study goals were listed on the website like this:
Five key tasks are included in this project: (1) study interaction of a potential side guard with other truck parts and accessories (e.g., fuel tanks, fire extinguisher, exhaust system) and the implications for a new Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulation; (2) investigate applicable international side guard standards; (3) perform a preliminary cost-benefit analysis of truck side guard deployment; (4) propose recommendations; and (5) propose means for voluntary adoption.“
When I found out that there were no plans to publish the completed study results, I made multiple inquiries at DOT and Congress. Some months later, after Departmental multimodal review, the results were whittled down to a literature review and finally published here:
When I realized that the majority of the report was missing, I submitted a FOIA Request asking for a copy of the entire report but was denied due to Exemption 5:
Exemption 5 protects the integrity of the deliberative or policy-making processes within the agency by exempting from mandatory disclosure opinion, conclusions, and recommendations included within inter-agency or intra-agency memoranda or letters. Exemption 5 also exempts from disclosure draft documents and recommendations or other documents that reflect the personal opinion of the author rather than official agency position. Finally, Exemption 5 exempts from disclosure deliberative records that may cause public confusion where the information were not the basis for an agency’s action or final report .
Any reasonable person could look at the conclusions from the published study and compare the data to the literature referenced and realize that there were problems. Here’s a fact sheet outlining the apparent flaws in the report published by FMCSA in May 2020:
A flawed conclusion and inconsistent crash analysis cut the apparent Vulnerable Road User safety benefit of side guards by approximately half.
This is bad. This is wrong. In the first place, the error leads to a flawed cost benefit analysis for underride rulemaking. In the second place, even the undercounted underride deaths for Vulnerable Road Users (pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists) – to the best of my knowledge – have not been included with data on underride deaths in prior NHTSA underride regulatory analysis. Really flawed cost benefit analysis.
Logic says that a flawed cost benefit analysis will lead to a faulty conclusion. The conclusion from multiple underride rulemaking efforts in the past has been that a regulation is not cost effective. In other words, those lives which could have been saved by underride regulations were not deemed worth the cost.
And, by the way, what exactly was the rationale behind leaving out information from the original study? What was DOT concerned about revealing? Would it have actually justified a side guard regulation, which would, of course, have not been looked on very favorably by many in the trucking industry? Would the study have provided a broader look at additional advantages of side guards, including their ability to increase aerodynamic fuel savings, spray reduction, wind stability, GHG reduction, or other accompanying side guard benefits?
As far as I can tell, NHTSA’s faulty analysis has resulted in “guidance” to the industry which effectively turned a blind eye to the fact that trucks with a dangerous design indisputably allow cars and Vulnerable Road Users to go under trucks and sentence thousands of road users to Death By Underride.
To compound the problem, at least in recent years, underride rulemaking has been assigned to the Crashworthiness Standards division of NHTSA in the USDOT. In my opinion, that is not a good fit. The majority of rulemaking done by NHTSA has to do with the auto industry, whereas FMCSA is the agency charged with motor carrier safety.
Furthermore, underride protection doesn’t fit the definition of crashworthiness, namely, “the ability of a car or other vehicle to withstand a collision or crash with minimal bodily injury to its occupants.“ Underride protection is installed on trucks but does not protect truck occupants. So the trucking industry gets away with claiming they’re not responsible to take care of the problem. And it isn’t a feature of the car whose occupants need to be protected, so the automakers don’t have any responsibility. Consequently, underride protection doesn’t truly fit into the current NHTSA division of responsibilities as far as I can tell. The result: on top of industry opposition, underride rulemaking seems doomed because, organizationally, it falls between the cracks.
It appears to me that this complex issue would be better suited as a multimodal collaborative project under the coordination of the Office of the Secretary rather than buried at NHTSA without suitable input from other agencies and the yet-to-be-established Advisory Committee On Underride Protection. Maybe then the Underride Initiative would get the priority status it requires and All Road Users would finally be protected from Death By Underride.
Oh, look, DOT just published their priority Innovation Principles, including this one:
The Department should identify opportunities for interoperability among innovations and foster cross-modal integration. In addition, DOT’s posture must remain nimble, with a commitment to support technologies that further our policy goals.
Will the U.S. DOT let the flawed analysis stand? Or will the coming year see significant progress in underride rulemaking? Secretary Pete, the final determination will be in your hands. Will you decide that comprehensive underride protection is warranted?
This week, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) justifiably pointed out how their amazing safety research has led to much of the bipartisan traffic safety legislation which the Senate and House recently passed — likely to see final confirmation in the coming weeks. Thankfully, this legislation includes underride provisions — for an updated rear guard standard and further research on side underride.
What the IIHS did not mention was how long it has taken for that legislation to come about — decades. Further, they didn’t stress, as strongly as I would have, how frustrating it is that the IIHS research — coupled with recommendations from the NTSB — still doesn’t seem to be enough to warrant a straight-out mandate for side guards.
On top of that, the IIHS did not mention the missing components of the underride legislation; the infrastructure bill does not include even a hint of research regarding protection of the traveling public from deadly underride under Single Unit Trucks (otherwise known as straight or box trucks) or at the front of large trucks. And we’re talking not only about passenger vehicle occupants but, also, Vulnerable Road Users — pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists. Yet, IIHS and FMCSA have published reports about those safety hazards:
If NHTSA is truly data-driven, then shouldn’t the fact that 61% of the two-vehicle truck crash fatalities in 2019 occurred with first impact at the front of large trucks spur significant research into front underride protection? Shouldn’t we at least consider the potential for proven technology — already installed by major international truck manufacturers on their products in other countries — to make truck crashes more survivable?
Will we, instead, continue to ignore the preventable deaths which occur year after year? Perhaps might we, at least, engage in meaningful, collaborative conversation about potential solutions — active and passive — to end these tragedies? Other countries have done so.
We are petitioning the U.S. Department of Transportation to take specific immediate action towards the goal of ending traffic deaths by including Single Unit Trucks (SUTS) and vulnerable road users in the scope of mandated and studied comprehensive underride protection, as called for in the STOP Underrides Bill. SUTs outnumber tractor-trailers and, in fact, comprehensive underride protection on them has already been recommended by the NTSB and the IIHS. Yet SUTs are not included in the Underride Sections of the recently passed Senate and House Infrastructure legislation.
Therefore, we are asking that you expedite work on the 2014 Karth Family petition for underride protection on Single Unit Trucks by taking the following actions:
Establish the Advisory Committee On Underride Protection, as called for in the STOP Underrides Bill and the Infrastructure Legislation in both the House and Senate.
Proceed immediately to issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for comprehensive underride protection on Single Unit Trucks – front, side, and rear.
Add language explicitly stating that all mandated and studied comprehensive underride guards are to protect all road users, including Vulnerable Road Users (pedestrians, cyclists, & motorcyclists).
Respectfully submitted,
Marianne & Jerry Karth AnnaLeah & Mary for Truck Safety
Petition for Underride Rulemaking on Single Unit Trucks (sign here)
I don’t know the exact fatality rate for people who experience Passenger Compartment Intrusion (PCI) when their passenger vehicle collides with a truck. But I imagine that it is close to 100%. After all, PCI means that the truck comes into your survival space. When a truck hits your body, what do you think is going to happen? You don’t stand a chance of survival, that’s what!
So, if there is technology which can prevent PCI, don’t you think that we should put it on large trucks? Don’t you think that road users should have the right to life?
Now this is an innovative way to protect cyclists. . .
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The Halifax Cycling Coalition is applauding regional council for its part in getting the first side guard installed on a municipal vehicle Tuesday.
“We’re so excited. This is a huge step forward for the municipality and also for safety in Halifax,” said Kelsey Lane, executive director of the coalition.
The question was brought to my attention as to whether truck side guards, if they were strong enough to prevent passenger vehicle underride (i.e., probable death or severe injury), would be more harmful to pedestrians and cyclists (Vulnerable Road Users–VRU).
I didn’t know. So I asked the experts with whom I am acquainted, and this is what I found out:
Hi MarianneWell-designed rear, side, front underride protection on trucks, will not make it more dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists, but potentially make it safer for peds and cyclists.
Adjunct Assoc. Professor George Rechnitzer, Transport and Road Safety (TARS) Research, University of New South Wales (UNSW), Web: http://www.tars.unsw.edu.au/
The other feedback, which I received from a crash reconstructionist friend who sees the aftermath of lots of crashes firsthand, was more short and to the point: “I think that stronger side skirts will save lives no matter what vehicle is in play. Would you, as a cyclist, rather bump your head on a resilient skirt (or a flexible one like mine for that matter) or slide underneath a trailer and end up looking like a pancake?”
Goodness, I sure hope that we can help shed light on issues such as these at the Underride Roundtable on May 5, 2016. Delays resulting from endless debate and/or stalling on problem-solving has already led to too many needless and preventable deaths.
