As a mom of nine, I know all too well the hardships and difficulties that accompany pregnancy, labor, and birth. So I really shouldn’t be surprised that the process of bringing about change in traffic safety regulations is similarly fraught with angst. Right?

Yet, I was still taken by surprise when I discovered last week that a long-awaited infrastructure bill contained an unexpected revision of legislative language on underride provisions — after it was already passed. Here I thought that the 2021 Infrastructure Bill — even though it didn’t contain a strong mandate for side underride regulations — contained a definite mandate to meet the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) TOUGHGuard level of strength for rear underride protection. Wrong.

Unbeknownst to me, the Senate had revised the House version of that underride requirement — despite the fact that IIHS had clearly shown that engineers could develop rear underride guards to prevent cars from going under the rear of trailers at the outer edges. This revision was noted by IIHS as an apparent and unfortunate rejection of proven safety technology.

• Another longstanding IIHS-HLDI priority included in the legislation is improvements to truck underride guards. The bill calls for an updated rear underride standard that would incorporate at least two of the three requirements for the IIHS TOUGHGUARD award: Guards would have to prevent underride by a passenger vehicle traveling 35 mph when it strikes the rear of a trailer in the center or with a 50 percent overlap. It also calls for regulators to consider requiring the most challenging part of the IIHS evaluation, the 30 percent overlap crash. Years of work by IIHS-HLDI paved way for safety provisions in infrastructure bill

In other words, the bill stopped short of a clear mandate to NHTSA to write a rule which would require manufacturers to meet that third requirement. In contrast, the House version of the Infrastructure called for a regulation in which Rear Impact Guards would be required:

• “to be equipped with rear impact guards that are designed to prevent passenger compartment intrusion from a trailer or semitrailer when a passenger vehicle traveling at 35 miles per hour makes— (i) an impact in which the passenger vehicle impacts the center of the rear of the trailer or semitrailer; (ii) an impact in which 50 percent the width of the passenger vehicle overlaps the rear of the trailer or semitrailer; and (iii) an impact in which 30 percent of the width of the passenger vehicle overlaps the rear of the trailer or semitrailer. “

Why would they water down the underride provisions so significantly — leaving it to the discretion of the Secretary (under pressure from a resistant Industry) on whether to require a proven solution? Do we want people to die?

Like any mother facing childbirth, after almost nine years of advocating for change in a dangerous truck design which killed my daughters, I now await the release of the Final Rule [anticipated in January 2022]. Can I expect the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to make a recommendation to the Secretary for the strongest possible level of rear underride protection? Can I trust them to take into full consideration the years of research, along with the unimaginable toll on individuals and families? Will we see a healthy, robust regulation released for rear underride protection?

Pray with me that it will be so.