Monthly Archives: October 2018

Mary Barra: “If it’s a safety issue, there should not be a business case calculated.” What about underride?

I have been wrestling with the question: Does NHTSA do a cost/benefit analysis before issuing a recall on an auto safety defect which has been shown to cause deaths? And if not, then why do they do a cost/benefit analysis to determine whether or not to require underride protection be put on trucks to prevent deadly underride?

And, in general, is the cost/benefit analysis which they have done on underride been flawed? Cost Benefit Public Comments on Underride Rulemaking

 

The Price Of Human Life, According To GM

Cost benefit analysis of safety recalls cspan video footage of GM Ignition Recall Senate Hearing, Mary Barra, CEO at GM

Mary Barra at 0:25: “If there is a safety defect, there is not a calculation done on business case or cost. It’s how quickly we can get the repair. . .whatever needs to be done to make sure the vehicles are safe that our customers are driving.”

Mary Barra at 3:21: “Again, if it’s a safety issue, there should not be a business case calculated.”

The difference is that underride is not about an auto safety defect. It is not about occupant protection on a car, and it is not about occupant protection on a truck. It is about equipment on a truck to protect those who might collide with it. No man’s land in terms of perceived responsibility.

See this description of that dilemma from a Transportation Research Board report titled, The Domain of Truck and Bus Safety Research, May 2017, p. 135:

An added complication for safety technologies is that the beneficiaries of heavy-truck safety are primarily other drivers, not the owners or drivers of the trucks. In a highly competitive business atmosphere, truck buyers are not easily motivated to purchase new technologies solely for the public good. Added equipment must also contribute to their company’s profitability in some way and thereby enable them to compete with other companies that have not purchased the same technologies. For this reason, many new safety technologies that are developed and demonstrated are very slow to be deployed. Those safety devices that do gain widespread acceptance generally have secondary-ancillary functions or capabilities that offer a short-term payback to the buyer.

Given these realities, the federal government plays an important role in the process of introducing new safety technologies into the commercial market. Large demonstration programs, involving broad involvement of all the suppliers of a given technology and all the medium-to heavy-truck manufacturers are essential to creating both a sufficient body of data and evidence that a product or technology performs well, in addition to a sense within the industry that the product will be cost-effective and, therefore, worth buying. It is a difficult task to create this critical mass and one that often only the government can accomplish.

In some cases, regulation may be the only way to achieve significant deployment. Even when there is a general consensus that the total benefits of introduction of a new safety technology would outweigh the total costs, there is still the problem of convincing individual vehicle buyers to pay for societal benefits. A regulatory requirement would level the playing field by requiring all companies to buy the equipment and thus eliminate the competitive financial disparity. Regulations are always controversial. It is extremely difficult to quantify the benefits of a technology before the fact. The Domain of Truck and Bus Safety Research

Another interesting read: The Hidden Benefits of Regulation: Disclosing the Auto Safety Payoff, 1985, Joan Claybrook and David Bollier

What do you think?

@SenatorBurr, the underride problem clearly has not gone away since we discussed it with you 5 years ago.

We are hoping for another meeting with our senator, Richard Burr. Clearly the underride problem has not gone away since our family met with him five years ago — just a few months after our crash.

Our TV interview, including Senator Burr, on August 13, 2013: https://tinyurl.com/y7ynscpr

Recent underride crashes which have occurred just in the last few days (there may well be more that I have not yet heard about):

Indiana: https://www.wndu.com/content/news/Deadly-crash-on-US-30-in-Kosciusko-County-slows-traffic-498880541.html

Kansas: https://www.kansas.com/news/local/article220852645.html

Michigan: https://wincountry.com/news/articles/2018/oct/30/cass-county-woman-injured-in-crash-with-semi/

Texas: https://www.wcmessenger.com/2018/news/1-killed-in-wreck-on-287-2/

Idaho: https://www.dailyrepublic.com/all-dr-news/solano-news/vallejo/idaho-man-dies-when-car-hits-parked-tractor-trailer-in-vallejo/

Maine: http://www.sunjournal.com/jay-woman-injured-after-running-into-tractor-trailer-in-wilton/

In Memory of Kristopher Reed

One person was killed in an early morning crash in Kosciusko County. It happened shortly before 7 a.m. at U.S. 30 and 350 West between Warsaw and Atwood.

The Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Department says a passenger vehicle had under rode a semi-trailer. According to witness statements the Peterbilt Semi was traveling from northbound 350 West onto Westbound US 30 and was slowing or stopping in the median. The Peterbilt’s trailer was then struck by an eastbound Dodge passenger vehicle.

40-year-old Kristopher Reed of North Judson, who was operating the Dodge, was pronounced dead at the scene. Man dies in Kosciusko County crash with semi

See more underride tragedies at Underride Crash Memorials and on our Interactive Underride Crash Map. To add more information on this story or to add other underride crashes to this map, send an email to underridemap@gmail.com; use this Interactive Underride Crash Map Crash Location Input Form.

Note: 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.