Is there anyone really watching over the big picture of safe driving–the complex combination of driver knowledge/behavior and vehicle technology? Here is some food for thought from Care for Crash Victims’ Lou Lombardo:
Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:
Nader’s work has resulted in the saving of an estimated 3.5 million lives over the past 50 years.
I have a friend whose family was shattered by a car/train crash many years ago. After the crash, the municipality took care of the dangerous crossing. Just today, another family was shattered in another state by a car/train crash at a crossing where there have been 6 “accidents” in the last 30 years. They have talked about making this crossing safer for $230,000. But they have not yet done so.
A National Vision Zero Goal facilitated by a National Traffic Safety Ombudsman just might hasten America along and save countless lives — which will be inevitably lost if we refuse to take a united, intentional, aggressive, not-willing-to-dawdle approach to reducing preventable crash deaths!
Get some useful tips for driving safely around large trucks on the road from Andy Young, CDL holder and truck crash attorney, who was moderator of the panel discussion at the Underride Roundtable and facilitated discussion at our follow-up meeting on June 24:
This year, I am putting together another request for underride design proposals. This time, I would like to be a little bit more specific and put out a call for research and data to put to rest, once and for all, the controversy over underride guard rigidity/strength and the potential for unintended injuries from too rigid guards. I would like to see it result in data which could lead to design of the best possible underride protection and practical solutions for underride guards to incorporate energy absorption components where appropriate.
Beyond that, because the crashworthiness of passenger vehicles could change over time, I would hope that the information compiled from past research and/or new research completed in the coming year would provide practical means for updating underride prevention technology in the future.
I hope to submit an abstract by June 30, 2016 to be considered for the presentation of compiled research and data on these issues at the First International Roadside Safety Conference in San Francisco in June 2017, as well as at future Underride Roundtables and made available to the engineering and trailer manufacturing community.
instead of like this:
Note: At the Knights of the Underride Roundtable on June 24, 2016, we briefly discussed the decades-old controversy of “too rigid guards” causing unintended injuries, deceleration forces, need for energy absorption, etc.
Yesterday, I recorded my thoughts about this confusing issue. I hope some will take the time to listen. In any case, expressing it was helpful to me as a survivor of an underride crash which killed my two daughters:
PLEASE NOTE: If you sign the petition, be sure to go to your email. We the People will send you an email which will say this in the subject line: “Almost done! Verify your Petitions.WhiteHouse.gov account.” Follow the instructions to verify your signature.
On June 24, 2016, people from diverse backgrounds met around a table at the IIHS offices in Arlington, Virginia, to continue the good work begun at the Underride Roundtable on May 5, 2016. This time, we rolled up our sleeves and hammered out a written recommendation for better rear underride guard requirements for tractor-trailers. To save lives.
First of all, we heard a presentation from Raphael Grzebieta on the approach which Australia is taking to improve rear underride protection in their country.
The basic idea is that they are not concerning themselves with spelling out detailed design specifications (e.g., what loads a guard needs to be able to withstand) but simply outline the performance evaluation criteria of: prevention of underride with the result of a survivable crash (with no injury criteria but instead relying on the crashworthiness of the passenger vehicle). While we might not yet be ready for that radical of an approach, we were given some food for thought.
(If anyone else had a different perception or would like to clarify my simplified explanation, please let me know and I can edit this description.)
Then, we had some useful discussion about the goals for improving underride protection, as well as some of the challenges which trailer manufacturers face. We benefited from some heated discussion which helped us to clarify terms and priorities. (See the bottom of the post for the Meeting Binder which I handed out for discussion purposes.)
After a break for lunch, we got down to work and spent some time brainstorming. As suggestions were tossed out for discussion, Andy Young typed up the suggestions , which were projected onto a screen for us to analyze and refine. Andy worked us hard and enabled us to reach a consensus and common ground upon which we could all agree.
What we came away with was a very good draft of recommendations for updated rear underride guard regulations for tractor-trailers. We also decided upon a tangible process for moving forward:
David Zuby will send the list of recommendations to me.
I will mail them out to the meeting participants.
They will make suggestions for revision, if appropriate.
We will come to a consensus for the creation of a final document to which we are all willing to sign our names.
Then I will distribute that document to the entire list of participants of the original May 5 Underride Roundtable — giving them the opportunity to review it and decide if they want to sign it as well.
We will then send the document to NHTSA via the Federal Register as a Public Comment on the Underride Rulemaking from the Coalition of Stakeholders Interested in Underride Prevention (CSIUP). [Tentative title for our group for lack of a better name to which we can refer]
We agreed to wait for future meetings to address other topics of importance* in the drive for underride prevention. These include such vital things as protection at higher speeds than 35 mph, Single Unit Trucks (which currently have inadequate or non-existent underride protection), side guards, front override, parking and conspicuity issues, and retrofitting.
UMTRI-89-2, Final Report: Examination of Features Proposed for Improving Truck Safety, May 1989 The University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, Aaron Adiv and Robert D. Ervin: https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/817/78350.0001.001.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y Reveals how and why earlier underride rulemaking was opposed despite evidence to show that it was expected to be effective.
A Mom’s Knee-Jerk Reaction to NHTSA’s Proposed Rule to Improve Rear Underride Protection The basic problem is that the proposed rule is simply adopting the Canadian rule which 93% of existing trailers already comply with and does not address offset crashes. So it is not much of an improvement, plus it does not address side or front and SUTs. Or retrofitting.
Please see this entrepreneurial effort to save lives. Inventors Paul and David Smart are experienced fire rescue workers who have patented a system to provide fire fighters with information in real time to help extricate crash victims faster and safer. This is a technology that is needed all across the U.S.A. today.
They ask:
“I’m writing to announce the launch of our Kickstarter page today. If we’re successful, we’ll raise 15K to have Chop Dawg Studios (www.chopdawg.com) create the demonstration prototype of our program that potential investors have been asking to see.
This will be a HUGE step towards helping us to help rescuers do their jobs and save more lives of crash victims. Here is the page:
Would you please share, forward, visit, post on FB, Twitter, etc. to help us get the word out? We need all the help we can get to raise 15K July 23rd. If we fall short, we get nothing. If we meet our goal, we could have our tech in recuers’ hands by the end of the year.”
If auto companies had hearts, they would be racing to help develop and deploy this technology.
There are many avenues to reducing the deaths and serious injuries from crashes. One of them is to improve the care of the victims in the aftermath of crashes. That is what this strategy aims to do.
Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:
A new Report on Trauma Care is out that calls for a Vision Zero for Preventable Deaths.
Pray for an important meeting on Friday at IIHS in Arlington, VA. We will be discussing details for underride regulations and hearing a presentation from an Australian on their proposed underride rule.
Also, here is a draft of the “Visualizing Rulemaking” law review article (to be published in the fall). See pp. 43-44 and 65 for reference to AnnaLeah & Mary and our safety advocacy efforts. http://ssrn.com/abstract=2799334
Meanwhile, as the discussion continues, people all over the world die every day because their vehicle is not prevented from riding under a truck. Just like AnnaLeah. Just like Mary.
There will be a meeting on June 24, at IIHS in Arlington, VA, with some of the participants from the Underride Roundtable, attempting to hammer out a better solution.
“The death of the actor Anton Yelchin, killed when his Jeep Grand Cherokee rolled backward down a driveway and crushed him against a mailbox pillar last weekend, has cast a public spotlight on a problem with some models of Jeeps and other Fiat Chrysler vehicles.
But for the company, there is nothing new about the issue — which federal regulators first flagged last August.
The question is why, nearly a year later, Fiat Chrysler has still not come up with a fix for the problem, which has now been linked to hundreds of accidents, dozens of injuries and now — potentially — a well-publicized death.
The company, which issued a recall notice on more than one million affected vehicles in April, will say only it is still working on a solution, there was no decision about a recall until this year and there has been no delay. It has written to federal regulators that the remedy will include a software change and “an additional mechanism to mitigate the effect of operator error.”
That solution is expected no later than July or August, a Fiat Chrysler spokesman, Eric Mayne, said on Tuesday in an email.
And yet, as far back as March, Fiat Chrysler was telling federal investigators that it already had “potential solutions.”
The problem involves an electronic gearshift, whose operation is similar to that of a video-game joystick. It has confused many drivers, who thought they had left their cars in park, only to find they were in neutral, and started rolling away after the drivers stepped out.
Rollaway accidents are particularly dangerous, and the investigation and recall are taking too long, Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety, a consumer advocacy group, said on Tuesday.
