Yesterday, I received good news on underride rulemaking from the Australian front. George Rechnitzer and Raphael Grzebieta were able to impact Standards Australia to issue a proposed rear underride rule which will be much stronger than their current rule (and than U.S. underride rules) and which will require a crash test.
The following is the letter which I received from Raphael Grzebieta, as well as the letter which he received from Standards Australia:
Hi Marianne,
Great news! Our Australian/New Zealand National Standard is now out for public comment before it is ratified as a standard for regulators (DOTs) and others in Australia and New Zealand.
We will be the first kids on the planet releasing such a standard that demands a crash test for an underrun barrier fixed to the rear of a heavy truck.
It has taken more than a quarter of a century (and many horrific deaths) but George and I have finally done it at last. We got it into the Standard.
There was some resistance by one of the DOTs but after some strong persuasion (by me and other DOTs, particularly NZ) at a couple of key Standards Committee meetings, all DOTs are on board with it now.
See attached – Section 7 and Appendix G.
Any one of you (and others – please email it out) are of course most welcome to submit a comment to Standards Australia. Good comments I hope.
All the best.
Kind Regards
Raphael
Raphael Grzebieta PhD (Professor, Road Safety)
Australian Naturalistic Driver Study, Lead Chief Investigator
www.ands.unsw.edu.au The letter to Raphael from Standards Australia:
Dear Raphael Grzebieta,
Please note that the following draft is open for public comment:
Draft Number:
AS/NZS 3845.2
Title:
Roadside safety systems and devices – Temporary work sites, bollards, light poles and sign supports
Project Committee:
CE-033 Road Safety Barrier Systems
Public Comment Closing Date:
22/06/2016 23:59
You can view the draft and any incoming comments here after entering your Standards Hub login details.
All comments are to be submitted on the Standards Hub. Follow the link above, login and select the “New Comment” button.
If you have any queries regarding the submission of comments, please contact us on the details given below or contact the relevant Project Manager.
Standards Australia is an independent, not-for-profit organisation, recognised
by the Australian Government as the peak non-government Standards body in Australia. Standards Australia develops internationally aligned Australian Standards® that deliver Net Benefit to Australia and is the Australian member of ISO and IEC,
Standards Australia is the Principal Sponsor of the Australian International Design Awards www.designawards.com.au
Marianne Karth asked NHTSA for information on Truck Underride Deaths.
NHTSA provided a revealing and disturbing set of data.
For twenty years about 4 people every average week an American motorist died of their injuries according to NHTSA’s FARS data. From 1994-2014 the total amounting to 5,081 deaths were recorded by NHTSA. See attached.
Year after tragic year the number has remained almost constant at more than 200 deaths each year.
Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) have access to such data, so why don’t we see more stories? See DOT and NHTSA databases available at IRE at http://ire.org/nicar/database-library/
Let’s get the media focusing on our clear and present dangers here at home in the U.S.A. today.
Let’s get the media to produce change for the better with news we can use.
The Department of Transportation collects statistics from crash reports given to them by each state on fatalities each year. I requested a chart of those crash deaths related to truck underride since they began collecting that information.
Unfortunately, it does not contain a breakdown of rear vs side vs front collisions. Also, there is a column for Passenger “Compartment Intrusion Unknown.” Our crash was listed as this category in the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS). However, there clearly was intrusion into the passenger compartment where AnnaLeah and Mary were sitting.
It makes me wonder how many PCI crashes are underreported. These statistics are taken from the police crash reports and it would be helpful if all states were provided with, and required to use, a uniform report form in order to make reporting and research more efficient and effective.
The Virginia Tech Senior Design Team has installed their innovative underride guard with sine beam to a trailer and sent photos to me! Testing is yet to come.
Doesn’t it look awesome?!!!!!! And we’ll get to see it and meet the Team on May 5 at the Underride Roundtable at the IIHS Vehicle Research Center.
VA Tech Underride Sine BeamVA Tech guard installedVA Tech Team with installed guard
L to R: Kristen Adriano, Daniel Carrasco, Andrew Pitt, Wayne Carter (Team Facilitator), Brian Smith, Sean Gardner
Not pictured: Jared Bryson (their Sponsor) and Robin Ott (their Project Advisor).
I have said it before and I’ll say it again: Life & death traffic safety problems deserve to be handled appropriately and not like some political tug-of-war game played by industry lobbyists, administrators, and legislators!
I have offered what seems to me to be a reasonable alternative when I petitioned President Obama to resolve our national traffic safety travesty in this way:
Set a National Vision Zero Goal (which would serve to raise national awareness and direct national priorities with the goal in mind of doing everything possible to move our country ever closer to zero crash deaths & serious injuries).
Establish a White House Vision Zero Task Force to address these traffic safety problems in an interdisciplinary, non-political manner.
Sign a Vision Zero Executive Order to pave the way for Vision Zero Rulemaking that could truly make Saving Lives a priority rather than an afterthought.
See more here about this ongoing problem & my recommended solution:
Here is a comment on the article from the Advocates for Auto & Highway Safety:
This is a terrific expose by Huffington Post that appeared in yesterday’s edition about the growing influence of special trucking interests in their continuing efforts to roll back truck safety rules including hours of service (HOS) and bypass the authorizing committees by using the Appropriations Committees. . . We learned on Friday that the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee will likely take up the FY2017 transportation funding bill on Tuesday with full Appropriations Committee mark-up on Thursday. . . We anticipate that the trucking industry will continue to try to block going back to the Obama Administration hours of service rule with more language and several states are seeking truck size and weight exemptions.
This is a very lengthy article which, for the most part, delves into the problem of truck driver fatigue (and the horrific, often fatal, crashes which all too often occur) and the pressure that the trucking industry continues to put on Congress with the result of making our roads less safe instead of more safe.
Please read and share this very informative article. It needs to be heard.
It only serves to emphasize the importance of our call for President Obama to set a National Vision Zero Goal, establish a White House Vision Zero Task Force, and sign a Vision Zero Executive Order. Are you listening, President Obama?
Here are some of the topics which this tell-it-like-it-is article covers:
There were several other industry requests in that funding bill for 2016, including a measure that aimed to extend the suspension of sleep rules that Collins had won just six months earlier. Her suspension lasted a year and required regulators to look into the effectiveness of requiring two nights of sleep and whether there was any case for the trucking industry’s position. But rather than see that process through, the new provision changed the study mid-stream and called for gathering even more data — including the regulation’s impact on the longevity of drivers. Studying workers’ lifespans, of course, takes entire lifespans. That provision was signed into law with the 2016 spending bill that ultimately passed.
“They just basically want to stall this forever,” said Rep. David Price (N.C.), the top Democrat on the appropriations subcommittee that deals with transportation.
Another measure the industry pushed last year aimed to short-circuit federal regulators’ efforts to evaluate raising insurance requirements for trucking companies. Currently, carriers have to maintain the same $750,000 policies they did in the ‘80s. The industry’s argument is that independent operators would not be able to afford higher premiums — and indeed, DND’s margins were so close it shut down when its insurance company raised rates after the Balder crash. The industry argues that 99 percent of truck accidents do not generate such high damages. But $750,000 doesn’t begin to cover the costs a serious semi wreck incurs. For instance, a widower whose wife was killed and children severely injured by a dozing driver in 2010 won $41 million in damages. The family of James McNair, the comedian who died in the Tracy Morgan crash, settled for $10 million in March last year. A somewhat weakened version of the measure did pass, requiring regulators to evaluate a number of different factors before they adjust the insurance requirements.
Another industry-backed provision aimed to hide the BASIC safety measurements for trucking companies from public view, and bar their use in lawsuits. The lawsuit provision was dropped from the spending bill during negotiations, but the BASIC scores were in fact hidden and removed from the agency’s website. The industry used a Government Accountability Office study that found the safety system could do better in some respects to justify its position, but the two firms involved in the Velasquez crash had exactly the sort of poor safety scores that the BASIC system predicts make them more likely to be involved in accidents.
Despite the fact that these provisions will likely have an impact on the safety of nearly 11 million large trucks registered in America, they were all buried in legislation that Congress had to pass to avoid a government shutdown, with little to no debate about whether they were a good idea.
“The advocates of relaxing the rules or eliminating the rules, they see that and think this is their train to catch. … Not just wait on the normal process, or count on something as pedestrian as actual hearings or discussion, but to make a summary judgement and latch it on to an appropriations bill,” Price said.
There’s something else all the industry-backed measures have in common: They are deeply unpopular.
The article focused on a truck crash in which a tired trucker plowed into the back of a State Trooper’s Crown Vic while he was on the side of a tollway assisting another trucker. Not exactly our circumstance, but made me tense up just reading about it. See our Crown Vic here:
Jerry and I were talking this morning. He had this question. . . even if an underride crash victim is at fault for the crash occurring, don’t they deserve a second chance at life? Do we really approve of an unnecessary/preventable death sentence for their mistake?
For the most part, from what I can see, victims of truck underride crashes, are the ones who bear the brunt of the problem. Even if some of them might be the cause of the crash occurring in the first place, do they not deserve a second chance to make up for their mistake?
Are we unwilling to pay to protect them from the second deadly collision which occurs due to inadequate or non-existent underride guards? Or is the Death by Underride Sentence — meted out to them by the regulators and manufacturers — acceptable to society?
Does a driver of a passenger vehicle get the punishment of a Death Sentence for rear-ending another passenger vehicle? Should they? Well, that’s basically what often happens when a car rear-ends a truck.
I just found out about a case, in 2000, where a Texas jury found “a trailer defective for not being equipped with side underride guards. Stated another way, a jury has now said manufacturers should equip trailers with something that the government does not require and the customer does not want.”
This article also states, “Between 1953 and 1998, when the current rear underride requirements were implemented, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) studied the issue multiple times. One of the questions that needed to be addressed was the potential benefit of such a device. In announcing that rear underride (but not side underride) would be required on trailers, NHTSA estimated that rear guards would save between nine and 19 lives per year (The Federal Register, Jan 24, 1996). How many lives would a side underride guard save annually? We don’t know, but accident research statistics indicate the incidence of side underride is substantially lower than rear impacts.”
The article also commented on the dilemma which the trailer manufacturers found themselves in:
“Trailer manufacturers take seriously their responsibility to put safe products on the roadways. But after this verdict, we wonder if they are feeling as trapped as a cardboard ballot on Election Day. Only time will tell if the industry is really stuck or if this case is just a dimpled chad.”
“In the absence of a federal regulation mandating side underride guards, trailer manufacturers are going to find it extremely difficult to produce a trailer that the Laredo jury would not consider defective.”
To sell a trailer equipped with side underride guards, a trailer salesperson would have to accomplish the following:
– Convince the customer the safety benefits would be worth perhaps an additional $1,000 cost per trailer and an increase in tare weight of between 800 and 1,000 pounds.
– Keep the customer from thinking in terms of how competitive trucking is today and that such a cost or weight penalty would put him at a competitive disadvantage.
– Prove that the height of the guard is just right – low enough to keep out cars and high enough to clear railroad crossings and other obstructions.
– Show that the guard is strong – but not too strong. NHTSA rear underride research in the 1970s concluded rear guards should absorb energy by being weak enough to yield – yet strong enough to stop the car. But we can’t simply apply the rear underride requirements to a side guard because crash dynamics of side underride are completely different from rear impacts. Should the guard be strong enough to withstand glancing blows as was the case in the Maravilla accident, or must it absorb the full impact of a broadside crash at a highway intersection? This is a key point since there are no objective standards, and juries have the right to second-guess engineers and federal regulators.[Note: See my posts on the topic of SIDE GUARDS–Side Guard Posts]
– Point out that maintenance of guards hung along the length of the trailer will be no problem.
– Demonstrate how the side underride guard can coexist with sliding tandems. Prove that it will not create a safety hazard by interfering with routine brake inspections and maintenance, tire replacement, or landing gear operation.
Did I read that right? Convince the customer the safety benefits would be worth perhaps an additional $1,000 cost per trailer. . . Here we go again, Profit takes Priority over Human Life.
Somehow I can’t seem to feel sorry for them because I know that their problems can be resolved. I hope that they will listen to what is discussed at the Underride Roundtable; it might just help them out of a hard spot. Win/Win.
Lead counsel Chip Ferguson stated, “The Jury in this case has sent a strong message by rendering the largest verdict ever in this type of case. They not only found that the Lufkin Industries’ trailer was defective but they also found that the United States government’s safety regulations were inadequate to protect the public from an unreasonable risk of injury and death. This verdict mandates that both industry and the government fix the problem, and make our roads safer.” Noting that trailer manufacturing is a multi-billion dollar industry, Ferguson added, “We have an industry that creates $10 billion every year in revenues. It is time for them to use those resources for something other than lobbying and politicking. It is time for them to pool those resources to make us safer.”
Co-counsel Chris Coco added, “Lufkin Industries and the entire trailer manufacturing industry knew about the dangers of side under-rides for decades. Rather than testing and developing solutions, they chose to ignore it, to do nothing. They used their influence to purchase de-regulation, all at the expense of victims like Kelleigh Falcon. Her life was ruined because of this. Her family was torn to shreds because of this. Lufkin Industries, the entire industry and our government all have her blood on their hands. It is time for them to clean up this mess.”
And here is a third case, which seems to support the legal obligation of trailer manufacturers to protect occupants of other vehicles which collide with them:
Background. Maribel Quilez-Bonelli (Quilez) was killed when the hood of her 2004 Jeep Liberty under-rode a dump truck that was stopped in the left lane of an expressway while municipal employees did maintenance work in the area. Quilez apparently realized at the last minute that the truck ahead of her was not moving and she swerved to avoid a collision. However, the driver’s side of her Jeep impacted the truck and the truck’s bumper penetrated the driver’s side roof and windshield of the Jeep, striking Quilez in the face and head. Relatives of Quilez filed a product liability action against Ox Bodies, Inc. and Truck Bodies & Equipment Int’l, Inc., the companies that designed and manufactured the dump body of the truck, claiming that the company failed to properly design or manufacturer the dump truck’s rear guard. The defendants moved for summary judgment or judgment on the pleadings, arguing that the crashworthiness doctrine did not apply in Puerto Rico and that Quilez’s negligent design claim was barred by Puerto Rico law.
The court then explained that Larsen has been interpreted to mean that manufacturers must be held to a reasonable duty of care in the design of their vehicles in accordance with the state of the art to minimize the effects of the foreseeable hazards of collisions and impacts. The court noted that rear-end collisions are common and the danger of under-ride accidents was well known to truck manufacturers and had been for decades.. . .The better rule, according to the court, and the one favored by the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability was to hold manufacturers to a reasonable duty of care in the design of rear bumpers so as to minimize the effects of accidents to those who collide with its vehicles.
Given that foreseeability is the “linchpin” for determining duty in a negligence claim and having determined as part of the crashworthiness analysis that accidents involving other vehicles were foreseeable, the court could not determine, as a matter of law, that Quilez’s negligent design claim was barred by Puerto Rico law.
If cases like these have had favorable outcomes for the plaintiffs, then why have they not made a noticeable impact on the regulation and manufacture of truck underride guards? That is what I would like to know.
