UPDATE March 13, 2026: Hundreds of people die every year when pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, and occupants of passenger vehicles go under trucks. Please consider joining a STOP Underrides National Town Hall via Zoom April 15 | 8 – 9 pm ET |RSVP HERE.
Your voice at this unique advocacy gathering will let your U.S. Senators and Representative know that you want them to pass the STOP Underrides Act of 2026.
According to the Centre County Coroner’s Office, 43-year-old Stephen Long, of Lock Haven, died in the crash and an autopsy is scheduled for Saturday.
Because the bottom of a truck is higher than the bumper of passenger vehicles, when there is a collision the smaller vehicle easily slides under the truck and the first point of impact is the windshield. Seatbelts, airbags, and car crumple zones do not function as intended in underride crashes —front, side, and rear — leaving passenger vehicle occupants vulnerable to life-threatening injuries.
Stephen Long, Precious One Gone Too Soon
See Underride Crash Memorials posted here and at #STOPunderrides Tweets. To add photos or more information on this story or to add other underride crashes to be remembered, send an email to underridemap@gmail.com. Please use this Interactive Underride Crash Map Crash Location Input Form to provide us with accurate information . (Note: the map is currently not online; but we would keep the information for future updating and to aid in underride advocacy efforts.)
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.
I’m grateful that the U.S. Department of Transportation announced their National Roadway Safety Strategy (NRSS) on January 27, 2022. Like others, I’ve waited a long time to hear that news.
“We cannot tolerate the continuing crisis of roadway deaths in America. These deaths are preventable, and that’s why we’re launching the National Roadway Safety Strategy today – a bold, comprehensive plan, with significant new funding from President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “We will work with every level of government and industry to deliver results, because every driver, passenger, and pedestrian should be certain that they’re going to arrive at their destination safely, every time.” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg Announces Comprehensive National Roadway Safety Strategy, January 27, 2022
While U.S. DOT has many tools at its disposal and will shoulder our responsibility, this must be a coordinated effort with our stakeholders across the public sector, private sector, advocacy, and research communities. National Roadway Safety Strategy, USDOT, January 2022
On the other hand, I heard strikingly similar rhetoric when Secretary Foxx spoke about the Toward Zero Deaths initiative in March 2015, as well as when NHTSA launched the Road to Zero Coalition in partnership with the National Safety Council on October 5, 2016 (more than a year after we launched our Vision Zero Petition). Here are some relevant quotes:
“We embrace the vision of Toward Zero Deaths; it provides an overarching and common vision that drives and focuses our efforts to achieve our shared goal to eliminate injuries and fatalities on our roadways,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “The U.S. Department of Transportation will do our part by aggressively using all tools at our disposal – research into new safety systems and technologies, campaigns to educate the public, investments in infrastructure and collaboration with all of our government partners to support strong laws and data-driven approaches to improve safety.” AASHTO introduces Toward Zero Deaths Plan to reduce roadway fatalities, 3/10/2015
Deja vu. And what has changed? In any case, here we are. So let’s talk about how the NRSS could be applied to a specific traffic safety issue — truck underride. One Safe System principle included in the NRSS is Redundancy:
Redundancy is Crucial. Reducing risks requires that all parts of the transportation system be strengthened, so that if one part fails, the other parts still protect people.
The Safe System Approach emphasizes that redundancy is critical, and safer roadways mean incorporating design elements that offer layers of protection to prevent crashes from occurring and mitigate harm when they do occur.
This sounds exactly like the combination of crash avoidance technologies (along with improving driver behavior) to prevent crashes from happening, plus underride protection to reduce injuries when crashes do occur. In fact, I’ve previously written about that very topic:
The reality is that crash avoidance technologies cannot prevent all crashes. Even though crash avoidance technologies may be able to reduce speed at impact, they doesn’t necessarily prevent a collision from happening in every instance. In fact, when collisions do occur between a passenger vehicle and a large truck — even at 15 mph — they will likely result in deadly underride and Passenger Compartment Intrusion unless effective underride protection has been installed on the truck.
The NRSS uses the word zero 16 times, including here:
Zero is the only acceptable number of deaths on our highways, roads, and streets. The United States Department of Transportation is committed to taking substantial, comprehensive action to significantly reduce serious and fatal injuries on the Nation’s roadways.
U.S. DOT recognizes the Safe System Approach as encompassing all the roadway safety interventions required to achieve the goal of zero fatalities, including safety programs focused on infrastructure, human behavior, responsible oversight of the vehicle and transportation industry, and emergency response.
Therefore, I will expectantly draw the conclusion that the redundancy principle and the goal of zero fatalities will spur the US DOT to carry out their responsibility to oversee the transportation industry and thereby issue comprehensive underride protection rulemaking — front, side, & rear, on both tractor-trailers and Single Unit Trucks. To do otherwise is hypocrisy.
Will it be necessary for me to continue to ask the question: Is every death unacceptable? Were my daughters’ lives considered worth saving — along with countless other victims of Death By Underride? Is #ZeroTrafficDeaths meaningless rhetoric? Or, is it possible that I can count on the Department of Transportation to prioritize the saving of lives by issuing comprehensive underride rulemaking in which cost benefit analysis is no longer weighted in favor of industry?
Likewise, can I expect when NHTSA is informed of potential safety defects that they will proceed with formal investigations — no matter how many deaths and serious injuries have been reported?
UPDATE March 13, 2026: Hundreds of people die every year when pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, and occupants of passenger vehicles go under trucks. Please consider joining a STOP Underrides National Town Hall via Zoom April 15 | 8 – 9 pm ET |RSVP HERE.
Your voice at this unique advocacy gathering will let your U.S. Senators and Representative know that you want them to pass the STOP Underrides Act of 2026.
Preliminary investigations reveal that a 2017 Volvo tractor trailer was exiting a Royal Farms parking lot located at 29214 Lankford Highway. The trailer truck crossed over the southbound lanes to merge into the northbound lanes of Route 13 when it was struck by a 2005 Chevrolet Silverado truck.
The Chevrolet truck, driven by John David Eatherly of Cape Charles, was traveling in the southbound lanes of Route 13 and drove into the trailer portion of the semi that the Volvo was pulling. The crash impact resulted in the Silverado being lodged under the semi-trailer.
Because the bottom of a truck is higher than the bumper of passenger vehicles, when there is a collision the smaller vehicle easily slides under the truck and the first point of impact is the windshield. Seatbelts, airbags, and car crumple zones do not function as intended in underride crashes —front, side, and rear — leaving passenger vehicle occupants vulnerable to life-threatening injuries.
John David Eatherly, Precious One Gone Too Soon
See Underride Crash Memorials posted here and at #STOPunderrides Tweets. To add photos or more information on this story or to add other underride crashes to be remembered, send an email to underridemap@gmail.com. Please use this Interactive Underride Crash Map Crash Location Input Form to provide us with accurate information . (Note: the map is currently not online; but we would keep the information for future updating and to aid in underride advocacy efforts.)
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.
UPDATE March 13, 2026: Hundreds of people die every year when pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, and occupants of passenger vehicles go under trucks. Please consider joining a STOP Underrides National Town Hall via Zoom April 15 | 8 – 9 pm ET |RSVP HERE.
Your voice at this unique advocacy gathering will let your U.S. Senators and Representative know that you want them to pass the STOP Underrides Act of 2026.
Maui police today identified the 54-year-old Kihei man who died in a collision with a tractor-trailer on Monday as Brian Couch. . .
Police said a preliminary investigation revealed a white 1995 Toyota Corolla driven by Couch was traveling north on the highway when it crossed left of center into the grass median and onto the southbound lanes.
Because the bottom of a truck is higher than the bumper of passenger vehicles, when there is a collision the smaller vehicle easily slides under the truck and the first point of impact is the windshield. Seatbelts, airbags, and car crumple zones do not function as intended in underride crashes —front, side, and rear — leaving passenger vehicle occupants vulnerable to life-threatening injuries.
Brian Couch, Precious One Gone Too Soon
See Underride Crash Memorials posted here and at #STOPunderrides Tweets. To add photos or more information on this story or to add other underride crashes to be remembered, send an email to underridemap@gmail.com. Please use this Interactive Underride Crash Map Crash Location Input Form to provide us with accurate information . (Note: the map is currently not online; but we would keep the information for future updating and to aid in underride advocacy efforts.)
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.
As I contemplated the work ahead of the Department of Transportation and the trucking industry to advance side underride protection, I realized that the lack of a standard for side guards could be a problem. Actually, that is why we gathered together a group of engineers in 2020 to tackle the development of a Consensus Side Guard Standard. But there is a history to the decades-long effort that led up to this which I feel is important to document here:
This is a Timeline of activities leading up to the development of a Consensus Side Guard Standard. It provides a detailed overview of the multiple individuals and organizations who have contributed to raising awareness, researching, and collaborating to create a standard which the government can require and the industry can adopt to bring an end to preventable side underride tragedies.
My hope is that this resource will be reviewed, studied, and turned to as the Underride Initiative moves forward in the coming year. Let’s not reinvent the wheel but rather — with a sense of urgency — let’s build upon the work which has gone before us.
This timeline is not an exhaustive record of all the people who have played a part in advancing underride awareness, research, and protection. There are many people not mentioned here with whom I’ve crossed paths and many who worked on this problem long before I ever became aware of it. Much of that is chronicled in the thousands of posts written on this website.
They are all part of a nationwide, in fact international, Underride Initiative. Thank you, TEAM Underride, for your hard work and dedication to this cause.
We are so thankful for the many people who have contributed over the years to developing effective underride protection. This video was created in gratitude for their hard work. It provides only a brief glimpse and leaves out many people who should rightly be included in this Underride Hero Hall of Fame. Credit goes to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety for their tour guide’s description of the IIHS underride crash testing efforts at their Ruckersville, Virginia, research & testing facility.
UPDATE March 13, 2026: Hundreds of people die every year when pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, and occupants of passenger vehicles go under trucks. Please consider joining a STOP Underrides National Town Hall via Zoom April 15 | 8 – 9 pm ET |RSVP HERE.
Your voice at this unique advocacy gathering will let your U.S. Senators and Representative know that you want them to pass the STOP Underrides Act of 2026.
Bay County Sheriff Troy Cunningham said a Republic Services garbage truck was stopped on M-13 to make a turn onto Whitefeather Road when a pickup hit the garbage truck from behind.
Police say 41-year-old Jeffrey McKeon, who was driving the pickup, died at the scene. His twin 6-year-old children, Jaxson and Adeline McKeon, were rushed to an area hospital, but they were pronounced dead shortly after arrival.Twin 6-year-olds, father die after pickup truck crashes into garbage truck
Because the bottom of a truck is higher than the bumper of passenger vehicles, when there is a collision the smaller vehicle easily slides under the truck and the first point of impact is the windshield. Seatbelts, airbags, and car crumple zones do not function as intended in underride crashes —front, side, and rear — leaving passenger vehicle occupants vulnerable to life-threatening injuries.
Jeffrey, Jaxson, & Adeline McKeon, Precious Ones Gone Too Soon
See Underride Crash Memorials posted here and at #STOPunderrides Tweets. To add photos or more information on this story or to add other underride crashes to be remembered, send an email to underridemap@gmail.com. Please use this Interactive Underride Crash Map Crash Location Input Form to provide us with accurate information . (Note: the map is currently not online; but we would keep the information for future updating and to aid in underride advocacy efforts.)
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.
Today is #MLKDay. Mary loved that day because it was a special holiday which she liked to think was in honor of her — Mary Lydia Karth. And Mary loved holidays. Unfortunately, her life was abruptly ended after only fourteen celebrations of that holiday. It was “an unfair fight” on May 4, 2013 — our car against a tractor-trailer with a too-weak rear underride guard.
Karth crash scene, May 4, 2013
The National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies (NAMIC) recently wrote about our story, our advocacy, and that Unfair Fight which has already claimed too many lives and continues to do so nearly every day:
We’re hoping that insurance companies will catch the vision that they, too, can play an important role in advancing underride protection by providing financial incentives for installing the best possible protection. Let’s end this unfair fight and STOP Underrides!
UPDATE March 13, 2026: Hundreds of people die every year when pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, and occupants of passenger vehicles go under trucks. Please consider joining a STOP Underrides National Town Hall via Zoom April 15 | 8 – 9 pm ET |RSVP HERE.
Your voice at this unique advocacy gathering will let your U.S. Senators and Representative know that you want them to pass the STOP Underrides Act of 2026.
One person is dead and two others are in critical condition following a head-on crash Saturday between a semi-truck and an SUV, authorities said. . .
The SUV’s driver, 45-year-old Michael McClintock of Pawnee City, Nebraska, was taken to a local hospital where he was later pronounced dead, the sheriff’s office said. His two passengers — a 46-year-old man from Falls City and a 27-year-old woman from Falls City — were in critical but stable condition as of Saturday afternoon. 1 Dead, 2 Critically Hurt After Crash With Semi-Truck
Because the bottom of a truck is higher than the bumper of passenger vehicles, when there is a collision the smaller vehicle easily slides under the truck and the first point of impact is the windshield. Seatbelts, airbags, and car crumple zones do not function as intended in underride crashes —front, side, and rear — leaving passenger vehicle occupants vulnerable to life-threatening injuries.
Michael McClintock, Precious One Gone Too Soon
See Underride Crash Memorials posted here and at #STOPunderrides Tweets. To add photos or more information on this story or to add other underride crashes to be remembered, send an email to underridemap@gmail.com. Please use this Interactive Underride Crash Map Crash Location Input Form to provide us with accurate information . (Note: the map is currently not online; but we would keep the information for future updating and to aid in underride advocacy efforts.)
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 I think that underride should be investigated as a potential factor in truck crash injuries and deaths.
In 2020, I became aware of further proof that underride regulatory analysis was both flawed and non-transparent. For some reason, in 2017, the FMCSA contracted with the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center to carry out a Study of Truck Side Guards to Reduce Pedestrian Fatalities. Originally the study goals were listed on the website like this:
Five key tasks are included in this project: (1) study interaction of a potential side guard with other truck parts and accessories (e.g., fuel tanks, fire extinguisher, exhaust system) and the implications for a new Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulation; (2) investigate applicable international side guard standards; (3) perform a preliminary cost-benefit analysis of truck side guard deployment; (4) propose recommendations; and (5) propose means for voluntary adoption.“
When I found out that there were no plans to publish the completed study results, I made multiple inquiries at DOT and Congress. Some months later, after Departmental multimodal review, the results were whittled down to a literature review and finally published here:
When I realized that the majority of the report was missing, I submitted a FOIA Request asking for a copy of the entire report but was denied due to Exemption 5:
Exemption 5 protects the integrity of the deliberative or policy-making processes within the agency by exempting from mandatory disclosure opinion, conclusions, and recommendations included within inter-agency or intra-agency memoranda or letters. Exemption 5 also exempts from disclosure draft documents and recommendations or other documents that reflect the personal opinion of the author rather than official agency position. Finally, Exemption 5 exempts from disclosure deliberative records that may cause public confusion where the information were not the basis for an agency’s action or final report .
Any reasonable person could look at the conclusions from the published study and compare the data to the literature referenced and realize that there were problems. Here’s a fact sheet outlining the apparent flaws in the report published by FMCSA in May 2020:
A flawed conclusion and inconsistent crash analysis cut the apparent Vulnerable Road User safety benefit of side guards by approximately half.
This is bad. This is wrong. In the first place, the error leads to a flawed cost benefit analysis for underride rulemaking. In the second place, even the undercounted underride deaths for Vulnerable Road Users (pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists) – to the best of my knowledge – have not been included with data on underride deaths in prior NHTSA underride regulatory analysis. Really flawed cost benefit analysis.
Logic says that a flawed cost benefit analysis will lead to a faulty conclusion. The conclusion from multiple underride rulemaking efforts in the past has been that a regulation is not cost effective. In other words, those lives which could have been saved by underride regulations were not deemed worth the cost.
And, by the way, what exactly was the rationale behind leaving out information from the original study? What was DOT concerned about revealing? Would it have actually justified a side guard regulation, which would, of course, have not been looked on very favorably by many in the trucking industry? Would the study have provided a broader look at additional advantages of side guards, including their ability to increase aerodynamic fuel savings, spray reduction, wind stability, GHG reduction, or other accompanying side guard benefits?
As far as I can tell, NHTSA’s faulty analysis has resulted in “guidance” to the industry which effectively turned a blind eye to the fact that trucks with a dangerous design indisputably allow cars and Vulnerable Road Users to go under trucks and sentence thousands of road users to Death By Underride.
To compound the problem, at least in recent years, underride rulemaking has been assigned to the Crashworthiness Standards division of NHTSA in the USDOT. In my opinion, that is not a good fit. The majority of rulemaking done by NHTSA has to do with the auto industry, whereas FMCSA is the agency charged with motor carrier safety.
Furthermore, underride protection doesn’t fit the definition of crashworthiness, namely, “the ability of a car or other vehicle to withstand a collision or crash with minimal bodily injury to its occupants.“ Underride protection is installed on trucks but does not protect truck occupants. So the trucking industry gets away with claiming they’re not responsible to take care of the problem. And it isn’t a feature of the car whose occupants need to be protected, so the automakers don’t have any responsibility. Consequently, underride protection doesn’t truly fit into the current NHTSA division of responsibilities as far as I can tell. The result: on top of industry opposition, underride rulemaking seems doomed because, organizationally, it falls between the cracks.
It appears to me that this complex issue would be better suited as a multimodal collaborative project under the coordination of the Office of the Secretary rather than buried at NHTSA without suitable input from other agencies and the yet-to-be-established Advisory Committee On Underride Protection. Maybe then the Underride Initiative would get the priority status it requires and All Road Users would finally be protected from Death By Underride.
Oh, look, DOT just published their priority Innovation Principles, including this one:
The Department should identify opportunities for interoperability among innovations and foster cross-modal integration. In addition, DOT’s posture must remain nimble, with a commitment to support technologies that further our policy goals.
Will the U.S. DOT let the flawed analysis stand? Or will the coming year see significant progress in underride rulemaking? Secretary Pete, the final determination will be in your hands. Will you decide that comprehensive underride protection is warranted?
UPDATE March 13, 2026: Hundreds of people die every year when pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, and occupants of passenger vehicles go under trucks. Please consider joining a STOP Underrides National Town Hall via Zoom April 15 | 8 – 9 pm ET |RSVP HERE.
Your voice at this unique advocacy gathering will let your U.S. Senators and Representative know that you want them to pass the STOP Underrides Act of 2026.
A driver was killed early Sunday morning in Berkley when she slammed into a tractor-trailer while driving the wrong way.
Because the bottom of a truck is higher than the bumper of passenger vehicles, when there is a collision the smaller vehicle easily slides under the truck and the first point of impact is the windshield. Seatbelts, airbags, and car crumple zones do not function as intended in underride crashes —front, side, and rear — leaving passenger vehicle occupants vulnerable to life-threatening injuries.
Sara Paulo, Precious One Gone Too Soon
See Underride Crash Memorials posted here and at #STOPunderrides Tweets. To add photos or more information on this story or to add other underride crashes to be remembered, send an email to underridemap@gmail.com. Please use this Interactive Underride Crash Map Crash Location Input Form to provide us with accurate information . (Note: the map is currently not online; but we would keep the information for future updating and to aid in underride advocacy efforts.)
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.
