All posts by Marianne

“Mistakes happen on the road. The goal is to make sure that those don’t result in serious injury or death.”

Truck Safety, , ,

The most recent underride which I have heard about involved a car driver, in Wisconsin, who ran a stop sign and consequently collided with the side of a tractor-trailer resulting in underride. There is speculation that alcohol might be a factor.

Man transported to hospital by MedFlight after crashing into semitruck, sheriff says

Unfortunately, this is exactly the kind of crash circumstance which undoubtedly has contributed to attitudes which blame the victim and neglect the underlying dangerous geometric mismatch between passenger vehicles and larger commercial motor vehicles. The result is that we have lost the opportunity to save lives by making truck crashes more survivable.

I have described this attitude along with other possible reasons why the underride problem has not been adequately addressed: A DIFFERENT STRATEGY To Achieve Underride Protection

“Mistakes happen on the road. The goal is to make sure that those mistakes don’t result in serious injury or death.” That’s what Eric Flack said he was told by the IIHS in one of the segments of his truck underride series.

Award-Winning Truck Underride Full-Length Documentary Is Impressive, But The Best Is Yet To Come

Truck Safety, , ,

Eric Flack and his team at WUSA 9, over the course of this last year, investigated the truck underride problem and attempts to get it solved once and for all. They even won a prestigious Edward A. Murrow journalism award for their hard work in looking into this complex and multi-layered traffic safety/public health issue.

Now all the separate episodes of their series are put together in this impressive full-length documentary of the underride tragedy:

WUSA 9 continues to cover our efforts to bring about a comprehensive underride protection mandate which will ensure that — one day — all trucks on the road will be much safer to travel around. I look forward to them adding a final episode to their underride story because I know that the best is yet to come.

Thank you, Erin Spaht & Eric Flack!

$ gain motivates engineers to end underride tragedies? Nothing further from truth.

Truck Safety

Two separate comments which I read today implied that some are inferring that the hope of turning a profit is what primarily motivates engineers to develop solutions to end underride tragedies. Nothing is further from the truth.

The fact of the matter is that most of those, who stick out their necks to go against the stream of opposition to implementing underride solutions, are doing so on their own time and out of their own pocket because they have seen the devastation of underride crashes over and over and have decided to try and do something about this travesty!

The truth is that those, who oppose progress in this means of preventing motor vehicle fatalities, might be the ones more likely motivated by financial gain. Just sayin’ . . .

Wrong-headed thinking of industry leaders

Of course, I have to add here that the regulated-industry reaction is only to be expected because they are organizations whose duty it is to protect their bottomline — despite being composed of individuals who, on their own and following their own consciences, might react differently.

So, who should we let determine the fate of vulnerable travelers of our roads?

Another Successful TrailerGuard System Safety Skirt Crash Test : No Passenger Compartment Intrusion

Truck Safety, , , , , , ,

On Saturday, June 2, 2018, Aaron Kiefer’s volunteer crew of crash testers, conducted another round of crash testing with his TrailerGuard System consisting of a polyester webbing Safety Skirt connected to his aluminum Rear Reinforcement Attachment (which strengthens the existing rear underride guard).

Crash Test #1 showed some Passenger Compartment Intrusion (PCI), which means the people in the car would have been injured. Analysis of the results showed that the webbing was likely too low and not able to catch the car.

Crash Test #2, on the other hand, was very successful: no PCI. The car was damaged from the collision but did not go under the trailer and rebounded back. 35 mph Delta-V force, 31 mph impact speed

Aerial view from a drone:

Q. What does it mean that the air bags did not deploy?

A. The acceleration was low enough that the car decided that it didn’t need them. So the crash pulse was “long” due to the flexibility/energy absorbing of the webbing. According to the air bag control module report, the car deployed the driver seat and passenger seat belt pretensioners. However, the severity of the crash was judged below the threshold to require the frontal air bags. This is due to the fact that the deceleration was achieved over a long duration (over 200 ms) and that the decleration rate was low.
Q. So, how would occupants have fared?
A. The occupants would have been fine in this 30+ mph collision since PCI was avoided and the energy was absorbed by the webbing and the vehicle structure. the threshold for air bag deployment of a vehicle of this type striking a solid object is 10-15 mph.
Crash testing — especially without the backing of corporate R&D resources — is time-consuming but well worth the effort. Imagine where we would be in terms of preventing devastating truck underride if we all collaborated to get the job done!

Glimpses of 13-year old Mary’s hopes & dreams — from a letter she wrote to herself 2 weeks before she died

AnnaLeah and Mary,

Glimpses of 13-year old Mary Lydia Karth — her questions, hopes, & dreams — from a letter she wrote to herself two weeks before she died from truck underride. 

She also wrote: “I hope . . . I’m living every day like it’s my last.”

You were, Mary — so full of joie de vivre. Missin’ you.

Mary models a wedding dress Mary had fun modeling Rebekah’s wedding dress as it was sewed step-by-step…she will never wear her own.

Mary with her brother’s dog

Mary, A Photo Album

Underrides happen frequently & a solution is at hand … and it is something many truckers would support.

Truck Safety, ,
From the inventor of the AngelWing Side Guard:

“This video conveys, through wide and varied news coverage, the frequency that underrides happen and that a solution is at hand … and it is something many truckers would support. Please share liberally.”

Underride Question: Litigation or Legislation?

Truck Safety, , , , ,

We would have liked to see the DOT and trucking industry solve the underride problem on their own because it is the right thing to do. Because they have not, we are now faced with the question: Litigation or Legislation?

Last week, a side underride case in Texas was settled as a wrongful death suit. The trailer manufacturer acknowledged their failure to act to install technology which could have prevented the death of Kathryn Dodgen:

http://www.houstonpress.com/news/family-files-wrongful-death-lawsuit-against-a-trailer-manufacturer-after-deadly-crash-7704640

Kathy’s family and their lawyers believe the accident was entirely preventable—and so this week, they filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the trailer’s manufacturer, PJ Trailers. In the lawsuit, they accuse the manufacturer of releasing a defectively designed product onto the market, violating Texas’s products liability laws. The trailer didn’t have any side guards that would have prevented Kathryn’s car from going underneath it.

What does this mean for the future? Likely, with the hundreds if not thousands of underride deaths (and debilitating injuries) which occur every year in this country, there will be many more such lawsuits filed because of the precedent that this case has set.

How do we want this to play out? Do we want the trucking industry to face massive loss due to this de facto standard which will hold them liable for these preventable underride tragedies? Or do we want to protect them from litigation through legislation which will provide them underride standards to follow?

May 12, 2018, mwk

Update: Other posts on Underride Litigation

If you have lost a loved one in a truck crash, find out if underride was involved. Contact us to find out more.

Safety Advocacy, Truck Safety

Many times when people lose a loved one in a truck crash, they are not aware that the outcome of the crash might have been different if there had been adequate and effective underride protection to stop the car from going under the truck.

If you have lost a loved one in a truck crash, find out if underride was involved. We lost AnnaLeah when she was 17 and Mary when she was 13 because of a truck underride crash on May 4, 2013. We are working hard to make sure that this doesn’t happen to anyone else. We hope to have other families join with us to win this battle to end preventable underride tragedies.

Contact us to find out more. Email: marianne@annaleahmary.com

See a few of the thousands upon thousands of underride tragedies at Underride Crash Memorials and on our Interactive Underride Crash Map. To add more information on these stories 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.

Congress, Act Now To End Deadly Truck Underride!

In Memory of Danielle Garcia

Underride Crash Map, ,

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 22-year-old woman was killed in a crash in Pawnee County early Saturday morning.

According to the Kansas Highway Patrol, Danielle Garcia was driving east on U-25 just west of Larned when she rear-ended a semi which had slowed down to turn into a private driveway.

KHP says she was wearing her seat belt.

The driver of the semi was not hurt. Woman dies in Pawnee County crash

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.

Four Separate School Bus Underride Crashes in the Last Six Months

Safety Advocacy, ,
I have become aware of four SCHOOL BUS underride crashes since November:
 
 
 
Hmmm, I detect a pattern here.