On top of Wednesday’s good news. . .we heard earlier this week that — according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety — 5 out of the 7 trailer manufacturing companies which did not pass the IIHS narrow overlap crash test in 2013 (i.e., the rear underride guard did not hold up when a car crashed into it at the outer edge of the horizontal bar) are in some stage of “redesigning their guards to improve their crash performance.”

IIHS would “like to be able to conduct new tests demonstrating the improvements,” and are “hopeful that this approach can result in meaningful changes even before an upgraded standard from NHTSA, which could still take years to implement.”