1. Award-winning WUSA9 Underride Series
2. What do Heidi King’s responses tell us about the need for the STOP Underrides! Bill to insist that NHTSA move forward with underride rulemaking? Do we expect that they will do it without the encouragement of a law telling them (and authorizing them) to do so? NHTSA’s Heidi King Responds to Senator Nelson’s Questions For The Record on Truck Underride
3. Perhaps 700-1002 people may have died from underride since the bill was introduced on December 12, 2017, until this day: Every Month Passing of the STOP Underrides! Bill Is Delayed Means More Unnecessary, Preventable Deaths
4. Underride report language is in the Appropriations Bill:  FY18 omnibus report language,  Truck underride safety research—The Committee notes that NHTSA’s proposed rulemaking in December 2015 to update truck rear impact guard requirements cited 362 annual fatalities associated with light vehicle crashes into the rear of trucks. The Committee encourages NHTSA to move forward with this rulemaking and continue working with relevant experts and stakeholders, including researchers, engineers, and safety advocates, and the trucking industry, to facilitate the deployment and adoption of rear and side underride protection devices.
5. Front Underride Protection (FUP) is not talked about as much, yet many people die from lack of protection there as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=56&v=iNRpiRmlBEc and https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=SXZnHq1PUPU
6. Retrofitting is included in the Bill because there are millions of existing trailers on the road which will still be death traps otherwise. See IIHS video if you don’t believe me. After watching it, ask yourself if you would want to collide with one of the trucks on the road which was not retrofitted with effective and comprehensive (all around the truck) underride protection: https://www.facebook.com/iihs.org/videos/412706855872750/
7. To continue that theme of To Retrofit OR Not. . . in February 2018, a man died when his car lodged under the rear of a 2005 Great Dane trailer (one of the older weak rear guards). Our car lodged under the back of a 2007 Great Dane trailer (one of the older weak rear guards). How long do you suppose that we will continue to have those older (more dangerous) trucks on the road? Jessup man dead after slamming car into tractor-trailer on Beltway
8. President Carter made a point of saying that safety should not be a part of Trucking Deregulation:  Trucking Industry Deregulation Message to the Congress Transmitting Proposed Legislation. 
   June 21, 1979, To the Congress of the United States:I am today transmitting to the Congress legislation to reduce substantially Federal economic regulation over the trucking industry.The trucking industry today is subject to perhaps more complex, detailed, and burdensome Federal regulation than any other industry in our Nation. . . 

   SAFETY

   Reforms in safety enforcement are necessary because present levels of safety are unsatisfactory, and because authority to monitor safety practices and to sanction safety violations should be strengthened. These provisions are distinct from the economic reforms and are not made necessary by them.

   The bill I propose places new emphasis on the existing fitness test which guarantees that all new entrants into the industry are safe. It also consolidates the safety authority in the Department of Transportation, and gives the Secretary of Transportation broader and more effective authority to deal with safety violations. . .

   So I don’t want to hear anybody whine, “Oh, no, not another regulation!” This is a matter of protecting public health and safety — not restricting the freedoms of the trucking industry! If market forces were going to solve the problem, they would have done so decades ago. We apparently need a law to protect us.

With Hope, We Carry On: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kp7acA3CI34