If a picture is worth a thousand words, an underride crash test video is worth at least a million. Nothing is more convincing of the fact that underride protection can mean the difference between life and death. Well, nothing except viewing a crash test in person.
To that end, here is a sample of crash test videos which serve to document the technical effectiveness of underride protective devices — more startling when juxtaposed against crash tests with no underride protection or too-weak designs.
In case you need a reminder, these crash tests are not conducted merely to satisfy curiosity, but in an effort to bring an end to ongoing preventable, unimaginable underride tragedies.
For over 50 years, NHTSA has failed to require truck trailers to be equipped with underride guards that protect road users from death and injury. The industry has lobbied to keep it that way and tens of thousands of innocent people have lost their lives as a result. This week, a St. Louis jury made a trailer manufacturer pay a just price.
Why would the jury do so? Could it have been because Wabash continued to sell an inadequate rear impact guard as standard equipment — even though they have a safer option available — and because of the industry’s opposition and the government’s abandonment of public safety?
Underride Crash Memorials These are posts in memory of a few of the thousands of underride victims. The tip of the iceberg of senseless, preventable deaths. I will slowly be adding more.
What will it take to get UNDERRIDE on DOT Regulatory Agenda? We’ve been waiting 52+ years for DOT to move forward with side guards on large trucks — not to mention improving rear guard regulations and adding front underride protection. After numerous petitions, comprehensive underride rulemaking still has not made it the onto the DOT Unified Regulatory Agenda.
Collaborative Discussion of Side Guard Challenges on Specialty TrucksI was very pleased with the collaborative discussion which took place via Zoom on Monday, March 29, 2021, regarding the challenges of adding side guard safety technology to specialty trucks. Participants included primarily engineers and small companies who have been working on researching, designing, and/or marketing solutions to the underride problem. The meeting was also quietly observed by families of underride victims and administrative officials from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA).
The March Madness of Competing Traffic Safety InterestsWhat is it like to compete for the attention of government leaders in order to get traction on the traffic safety problem which took your loved one’s life? Envision a press conference on a hot topic where a cacophony of reporters can be heard shouting out — vying for the opportunity to have their question be the one that gets answered.
Time for a National Traffic Safety OmbudsmanAlmost five years ago, after delivering a Vision Zero Petition to leaders in Washington, D.C., I realized that we need something more than a White House Vision Zero Task Force and a National Vision Zero Goal. We need a National Traffic Safety Ombudsman to be at the helm of a nationwide network of community traffic safety advocates. Someone who will have a place at the federal table — with the authority to take ongoing action on behalf of vulnerable victims of vehicle violence.
Engineers, Trucking Industry, & Victim Advocates Collaborate at Side Guard Task Force On a Friday afternoon — February 26, 2021 — over 50 people met via Zoom to discuss comprehensive underride protection. The purpose of the meeting was to report on progress which has been made by several subcommittees since an earlier meeting in 2020 — including Industry Engagement, Research, and Engineering Subcommittees.
Should we be concerned about side guards getting hung up on railroad tracks?I keep hearing members of the trucking industry bring up the possibility of side guards on trailers getting hung-up on railroad tracks. They point to it as a reason to not require side guards on all new trucks. Is that a valid concern? And where is their documentation?
Transport Companies Provide Feedback on Side Guard Operational IssuesWe know that the trucking industry has expressed concern about potential operational issues which could occur when side guards are installed on large trucks. In order to address those concerns, we asked several trucking companies to give us feedback about their experience after installing side guards on their tractor-trailers.
Consensus Side Guard StandardOn April 17, 2020, over 40 people participated in a virtual meeting of a volunteer Underride Protection Committee’s “Side Guard Task Force.” This included two engineers from trailer manufacturers. As a follow-up, several subcommittees began to hold virtual meetings, including an Underride Engineering Subcommittee.
FMCSA Proposed Rule For Inspection of Rear Underride Guards A red letter day: The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) at long last has proposed a rule to add rear underride guards to Appendix G. What does that mean? It means that rear underride guards will be required to be in good condition in order to pass an annual vehicle inspection. Once the rule is actually issued.
Retrofit Solutions for Rear Impact Guards to Prevent Deadly UnderrideIt is to their credit that nine U.S. trailer manufacturers have improved their rear underride guard design to meet the IIHS TOUGHGuard standard and seven of them are putting it on all new trailers as Standard. What that means is that they have surpassed the current federal standard and have been crash tested to show that they are more likely to prevent underride and catastrophic Passenger Compartment Intrusion (PCI) — thereby more likely to save lives when passenger vehicles rear end tractor-trailers.
Save Lives by Lighting up Tractor-Trailers & Tanker TrucksTruck drivers can play an important role in making sure that the trailers which they haul are as visible as possible to other drivers on the road — especially at nighttime. On October 15, 2018, Leslie and Sophie Rosenberg lost their lives when they collided with the side of a tanker late at night.
Truck Driver Mistakes Don’t Excuse Industry & Government Negligence To Solve Underride ProblemThanksgiving Eve, another apparent underride victim lost her life: Though the truck driver may have made a mistake, not all the blame rests with him for a crash which might have had a different outcome with effective underride protection. Carriers, trailer manufacturers, DOT, & Congress can make these kinds of truck crashes more survivable.
A fully-guarded trailer hits the road – ready to STOP underride! Engineering ingenuity and a lot of hard work went into the research, development, and installation of this fully-guarded trailer system. This week, a small carrier in North Carolina became part of our pilot program. We are thankful that they have agreed to provide us feedback on this #SaferTruck as they drive it on the road to carry out their transport business.
On August 19, we hosted another Underride Staff Briefing — this time via Zoom. We are providing Congressional Offices with the PowerPoint pdf from that presentation, including comments from engineers with expertise in underride as well as underride families: Underride Briefing PowerPoint pdf (inc. links to resources & video)
Underride Crash Memorials These are posts in memory of a few of the thousands of underride victims. The tip of the iceberg of senseless, preventable deaths. I will slowly be adding more.
RAMCUP.Roya, AnnaLeah & Mary Comprehensive Underride Protection.They paid the price:
NOTE: The summer months involved a lot of traveling to help family and I was not able to continue reviewing truck crash notifications and writing underride memorial posts. As a result, you will observe an apparent cessation in these tragedies — not because they aren’t happening but only because I wasn’t monitoring and recording them. 10/1/24 mwk
Because the bottom of a truck is higher than the bumper of passenger vehicles, when there is a collision the smaller vehicle easily slides under the truck and the first point of impact is the windshield — resulting in underride and passenger compartment intrusion (PCI). Seatbelts, airbags, and car crumple zones do not function as intended in underride crashes — front, side, and rear — leaving passenger vehicle occupants vulnerable to life-threatening injuries.
This geometric mismatch has been misunderstood for decades. Reports on truck crashes generally focus on the cause of the crash and not what caused the deaths. So underride is undercounted. I know this from firsthand experience having been in a truck crash (but not in the part of the car which went under the truck) and lost two daughters because of underride (one of whom was not reported as such in DOT data).
In order to raise awareness and preserve the memories of underride victims — precious ones gone too soon — I have been writing memorial posts on what appear to me to be underride crashes. I am not a crash reconstructionist, and I do not have all the facts on these crashes; but underride should be investigated as a potential factor in truck crash injuries and deaths.
This is not an exhaustive list — merely the tip of the iceberg. But I hope that it serves to demonstrate the ongoing nature of a preventable public safety problem.
You can find these Underride Crash Memorial posts here.
“TEAM Underride,” a loosely-organized coalition of engineers, researchers, safety advocates, and families of underride victims have planned multiple underride crash tests, underride crash test events, and a vigil for underride victims. Two of those events were in D.C. — an D.C. Underride Crash Test Eventon March 26, 2019 in the Audi Field parking lot one mile from DOT and an Underride Victim Vigil in September 2023 on the sidewalk in front of the DOT building on New Jersey Avenue in D.C.
Despite multiple communications inviting the Department of Transportation, and especially NHTSA who is responsible for underride rulemaking, to these events, less than a handful of department representatives have shown up. What’s with that? What don’t they want to see? What they should want to see is honest to goodness research being undertaken to solve the decades-old problem of Death By Underride — proof-positive that the ball is in their court to issue regulations which could end countless preventable tragedies.
I emailed multiple people at DOT on January 11, 2019 — inviting them to our March crash test. Then, on February 6, 2019, after Lois Durso and I had checked out the Audi Field parking lot and walked over to DOT from there, we hand delivered a stack of event flyers and asked that they be distributed. I was told, “We will make sure that the event flyers are distributed.” Only one person — from FMCSA, which is not primarily responsible for underride rulemaking — bothered to come. Two months isn’t enough notice to put it in their schedule (no travel approval necessary)?
On July 11, 2023, I sent an online scheduling request to the Office of the Secretary — hoping that Secretary Buttigieg could attend the August 3, 2023, Raleigh Underride Crash Test Event. I followed up with an email to the Office of the Secretary. On July 19, I received this reply:
Unfortunately, DOT will not be able to send a representative to the event in Raleigh. Our team is sorry this didn’t work out, but we’re grateful for your continued advocacy and safety work and look forward to continued collaboration.
Raleigh Underride Crash Test Event, August 3, 2023
I received a reply on August 23, 2024, to my August 5 request for the Secretary — or someone from the Department — to come to the Raleigh Underride Crash Test Event on September 13, 2024. I understand that Secretary Buttigieg could not fit it into his schedule, but the response was rather disturbing — though not surprising:
Thank you very much for the follow-up. Unfortunately, DOT won’t be able to send a representative for this event. We’re very sorry it won’t work out this time, and we are sending our best for an impactful event next month.
There’s no shortage of industry complaints about the definition of consensus adopted by the NHTSA Advisory Committee on Underride Protection (ACUP) — a simple majority. There’s no mention, however, of the fact that NHTSA itself directed the committee to define it for themselves. Instead, ACUP minority members bellyache about how the safety advocates supposedly took over the reins of the committee and pushed their own agenda.
It should be no surprise that industry stakeholders supported ACUP research recommendations but opposed outright recommendations to proceed with underride protection rulemaking — a stance which they have clung to for 55+ years. So, when the majority passed motions to recommend underride guard mandates, the minority repeatedly attempted to overturn the consensus decision. In so doing, they invented a fake procedural issue, seemingly to divert attention from the real issue: dangerous trucks are killing hundreds of people every year and the industry is not voluntarily doing anything substantial to prevent the senseless spilling of blood.
The trucking voice also wants you to overlook the fact that there has already been decades of research done by engineers and researchers — sometimes suppressed and often ignored by industry and government. Some members of the trucking industry are also hoping that you won’t realize that they have already spent the last 55 years doing little to solve the underride problem themselves, while at the same time, doing everything that they can to discourage Congress and the federal safety agency from proactively issuing strong underride regulations.
These vocal opponents of commonsense safety measures would like you to think that underride guards aren’t really effective at preventing horrific injuries and unimaginable ways to die, that operational issues are insurmountable hurdles, and that there are not enough people dying from underride compared to the supposedly industry-ruining, economy shutting-down costs to justify moving forward with life-preserving action. In actuality, if they could get over their short-sighted, wrong-headed thinking, they might begin to understand that the industry could realize a Win/Win outcome if only they’d stop being so bull-headed.
The minority contingent apparently hopes that NHTSA will not act upon the majority recommendations. That, of course, would be no surprise. But what would be a welcome surprise is for ACUP members and trailer manufacturers to attend an upcoming Underride Crash Test Event in Raleigh, North Carolina, on September 13, 2024.
And beyond that, I’d be suitably gratified to welcome industry stakeholders to a roundtable discussion after observing the demonstration of underride protection at work to protect occupants of passenger vehicles, as well as pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorcyclists. In order to increase involvement, we are considering the possibility of organizing this collaborative opportunity as a Zoom meeting.
Save the Date and plan to participate! Double dog dare you!
Last week, I was surprised to learn that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration {NHTSA) had published a self-analysis of their progress — dated June 2024. NHTSA responded with an 8-page explanation to Congress after a federal advisory committee condemned the safety agency for 55 years of inaction on underride crash protection in a scathing 410-page report published last month.
The committee, called the Advisory Committee on Underride Protection (ACUP), was created by Congress in 2021, and established by a NHTSA charter in 2022, to assess NHTSA’s progress at advancing public safety and make recommendations to the Secretary of Transportation. The ACUP’s report documented a long history of agency reluctance to regulate the trucking industry’s safety practices, exposed allegations of misconduct by senior officials, and called for the reversal of recent rulemaking that the committee believed made “no substantial progress” to improving public safety. The report concluded, “[V]ery little has changed regarding side underride guard advancements in the last 50 years and no substantial progress has been made by DOT to prevent these horrific crash fatalities and injuries.”
All I can say is that NHTSA’s apologia to Congress is woefully inadequate. In a nutshell, “Woulda, coulda, shoulda.”* It further documents that the agency continues its disturbingly long history of inaction. Safety delayed is most certainly safety denied.
The ACUP report can be found here. NHTSA’s reportcan be found here.
* Put another way, “Spare me the useless & endless excuses!”
On June 28, 2024, the Advisory Committee on Underride Protection (ACUP) completed a scathing critique of the Department of Transportation. In a 410-page report, it documented a long history of agency reluctance to regulate the trucking industry’s safety practices, exposed allegations of misconduct by senior officials, and called for the reversal of recent rulemaking that the committee believed made “no substantial progress” to improving public safety.
In its Biennial Report, commissioned by Congress in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, the committee contended that fatalities from underride crashes, in which large commercial trucks cause severe injuries to occupants of passenger vehicles, as well as pedestrians, bicyclists or motorcyclists, are largely preventable. But the committee found that, for over 50 years, the Department has not required manufacturers to install guards under the open sides of trailers, due to pressure from the industry.
The report exposed allegations from a whistleblower of serious misconduct. According to a former project manager at the Department in the agency that enforces rules for the trucking industry, senior Department officials in the Trump administration suppressed taxpayer-funded research into the cost-effectiveness of regulations requiring side guards on trucks. Trucking company lobbyists reportedly were angered by the research findings and pressed the Department to alter them. Officials in the Biden administration commenced a rulemaking process that ignored the key findings of the suppressed research. The report called upon the Biden administration to reverse course and start the rulemaking process over again, this time by counting the benefits it previously ignored. Advocates have asked the Inspector General to investigate.
Many of the ACUP’s critiques and recommendations were adopted over the objections of the trucking industry, which lacked the ability to veto the committee’s actions. They published their dissent in a minority report authored by the CEO of Utility Trailer Manufacturing Corporation, which recently was found negligent for the fiery death of a 16 year-old boy in a side underride crash. Utility’s share of the punitive damages was $18.9 million.
The committee, which was composed of engineers, emergency medical professionals, victims, safety advocates, law enforcement, and the trucking industry, sent its Report via NHTSA to Congress and the Secretary of Transportation on July 2, 2024.
Below are links to the complete ACUP Biennial Report, the Majority Report, a Minority Report, and Appendices, including the statements of concurrence or dissent from ACUP members:
The NHTSA Advisory Committee on Underride Protection held its fifth meeting on April 24, 2024, via Zoom. The main agenda items were side and front underride. Presentations and discussions from the meeting can be viewed by using the YouTube video links below.
The NHTSA Advisory Committee on Underride Protection (ACUP) held its fifth meeting on April 24, 2024, via Zoom. The main agenda items were side and front underride. Presentations and discussions from the meeting can be viewed by using the YouTube video playlist link here.
The next (and last currently scheduled) ACUP meeting will be held via Zoom on May 22, 2024. The ACUP’s two-year charter is due to expire by the end of June.
On average, 42,075 people die on our roads every year, while 170,280 people are injured. Industry opposition. Regulatory capture. A lack of a sense of urgency or personal responsibility. These and other factors occur simultaneously — resulting in Too Little being done Too Late to prevent an unimaginable number of irreversible tragedies for those people and their loved ones.
It’s time to give vulnerable victims of vehicle violence a vigilant voice at the table. It’s time for a National Roadway Safety Advocate to serve the public’s best interests at the Department of Transportation. That’s why Senator Ben Ray Lujan (on May 9, 2024), and Congressman Steve Cohen (on May 10, 2024) introduced the DOT Victim & Survivor Advocate Act of 2024 — as a first step to provide safety advocates with a tangible means of bringing about meaningful change in a timely manner.
Reach out to your Members of Congress, using their online contact forms. Ask them to cosponsor and pass this bill: U.S. Senators – This link provides contact information for your U.S. Senators. U.S. Representatives – This link provides website and contact information for your Representative. Find your Representative by zip here.
All road users are vulnerable to deadly collisions with large trucks. Truck underride guards can reduce the severity of injuries which occur when a passenger vehicle, pedestrian, bicyclist, or motorcyclist goes under a truck.
Advocate efforts to bring about federal underride regulations have been blocked for decades. Recent testimony from a whistleblower revealed that senior agency officials suppressed vital research — hiding the fact that side underride guards would be cost-effective. Key documents are provided here:
A slide presentation by Mr. Kwan to safety advocates and researchers on April 22, 2024, explaining the suppressed research — pdf and video;
Exhibit A — the Statement of Work for contract number SA9PAI. FMCSA contracted with the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center for these deliverables to fulfill the research project entitled, Truck Side Guards to Reduce Vulnerable Road User Fatalities;
Exhibit B — The Suppressed Research – Truck Side Guards and Skirts to Reduce Vulnerable Road User Fatalities: Final Report on Net Benefits and Recommendations, the final report received from the Volpe Center, meeting all the requirements of the Statement of Work. Among other things, this final report found that it was cost effective to require tractor-trailers and single-unit trucks to be equipped with lifesaving side impact guards. The cost-benefit analysis and most of the rest of this final report were suppressed from the published report by U.S. DOT; and
Exhibit C — email communications obtained through the Freedom of Information Act which document that meetings and discussions concerning the Volpe Center report occurred among senior officials at DOT, NHTSA, and FMCSA in 2019 and 2020 without Mr. Kwan’s participation.
Letter from safety advocates, researchers, and others to the Department of Transportation Inspector General.
If this suppression of research goes unchecked, people will continue to be killed senselessly from preventable Death By Underride. Tell President Biden to take immediate action in order to undo the damage done by this misrepresentation of the costs and benefits of truck underride protection:
Direct the Secretary of Transportation to withdraw the erroneous Side Impact Guard rulemaking and then do it right in a new one by counting all preventable deaths as a benefit to society;
Appoint a Presidential Advisory Committee on Integrity of Underride Research to review and ensure the scientific integrity of all underride-related research and rulemaking; and
Establish the Office of National Roadway Safety Advocate in the Office of the Secretary of Transportation proposed by members of Congress.
Amend the July 2022 Rear Impact Guard Rule – bring it up to the TOUGHGUARD strength, as directed by Congress (Appropriations).
Can we expect the Department to adhere to its scientific integrity policy published in January 2024, or is it simply meaningless rhetoric?
Require that agency officials, including public affairs officers, shall neither ask nor direct nor suggest that agency scientists and technology experts alter the presentation of their scientific findings in a manner that may compromise the objectivity or accurate representation of those findings.Scientific Integrity Policy of the United States Department of Transportation, p.11
Can we count on them to mend the broken trust and act with a sense of urgency to fulfill their mission to reduce roadway deaths and injuries?
