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.
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!
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?
Not only have we lost two daughters due to a weak rear underride guard, but we continue to see countless loved ones lost to other families in a similar way. Senseless deaths. Solutions are available — developed by innovative engineers but too often left on the shelf while people continue to die.
I get Google Alert notifications of truck crashes every day. Here are the rear underride fatalities which I have found in the last few months:
Anyone, who observes a rear underride guard in an obvious state of disrepair, can report it to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) via their online National Consumer Complaint Database. Make note of the name of the trucking company. If possible, memorize its DOT# and get a photo of the guard. Then follow these step-by-step instructions for reporting this truck safety hazard as soon as possible:
Here are some examples of rear underride guards in disrepair — a condition which weakens their ability to stop a car from riding under the truck in the event of a collision:
Millions of trucks on the road have rear underride guards which are already too weak to prevent deadly underride. When they are not properly maintained, their strength is reduced even further.
See the DIFFERENCE:IIHS crash tests of weak & stronger rear underride guards
As of December 9, 2021, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is requiring that trucking companies monitor the condition of the rear underride guards on the back of their trailers. Truck drivers should look over this safety equipment when they do a pre-trip inspection. If this Rear Impact Guard has not been properly maintained, the trucking company and the truck driver could receive violations with fines attached at the time of annual vehicle inspection due to a Final Rule published by the FMCSA.
If a truck fails the inspection, the violation could cost a motor carrier a maximum of $15,876 and a truck driver $3,969. This could lead to the replacement of many rear underride guards — hopefully, with guards that meet the TOUGHGuard level of strength proven possible by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and now on many new trailers.
Motorists who notice guards in questionable condition can help to make sure that this important regulation gets enforced by using this tool to report them to the U.S. Department of Transportation:
Let’s hope that trucking companies and truck drivers will take responsibility themselves to properly maintain this safety equipment and even go so far as to replace outdated equipment with the stronger retrofit kits which are available thanks to innovative engineers — at a cost less than that of fines!
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?
These crash test videos show a 30% overlap with & without a TOUGHGuard rear underride guard.
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?
The video below may be meaningless to you. But the November 5 vote in the U.S. House on the Infrastructure Bill represents over 8 years of hard work and dedication. It symbolizes the answer to many prayers and petitions to bring to this nation the end of Death by Underride on the nation’s highways.
The historic inclusion of #underride provisions in this legislation is a major step forward in the long “fight” to end death by underride. We are thankful for the support and prayers which have lifted us up from far too many people to list here. But we want you to know that we thank you all very much.
It is notably significant that part of the Infrastructure Bill that was passed on 11/5/2021, as shown above, is the part not mentioned in the news concerning safety items included in the bill.
“(4) UNDERRIDE CRASH.—The term ‘‘underride crash’’ means a crash in which a trailer or semitrailer intrudes into the passenger compartment of a passenger motor vehicle.”
The bill includes the following provisions:
A mandate for the USDOT to upgrade the 1996 federal standard for rear underride guards so that all new trailers must “be equipped with rear impact guards that are designed to prevent passenger compartment intrusion from a trailer.” (rear crash test video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VucNLZIsIU)
The bill also calls for: “ADDITIONAL RESEARCH.—The Secretary shall conduct additional research on the design and development of rear impact guards that can—(A) prevent underride crashes in cases in which the passenger motor vehicle is traveling at speeds of up to 65 miles per hour; and (B) protect passengers in passenger motor vehicles against severe injury in crashes in which the passenger motor vehicle is traveling at speeds of up to 65 miles per hour.”
The bill requires that DOT revise the regulations relating to minimum periodic inspection standards, so that underride protection is included in commercial motor vehicle annual inspections.
It also requires action on side underride, that is, “SIDE UNDERRIDE GUARDS.— IN GENERAL.—Not later than 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall— (A) complete additional research on side underride guards to better understand the overall effectiveness of side underride guards; . . . (D) if warranted, develop performance standards for side underride guards.” (Side guard crash test video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nh-_KNKeYz4)
“The Secretary shall establish an Advisory Committee on Underride Protection to provide advice and recommendations to the Secretary on safety regulations to reduce underride crashes and fatalities relating to underride crashes.”
In addition to this historic federal underride legislation, we are awaiting a response to our September 2021 Petition for a Safety Recall of trailers without side guards. The American Association for Justice (AAJ) supports our petition to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to recall semitrailers due to lack of side underride guards. We received a letter of support from AAJ on October 25, 2021:
Of particular significance is this statement in the AAJ letter to Secretary Buttigieg:
“Van-type and box semi trailers vehicles that do not have underride guards are defective in design, under the statutory definition of defect, because they are missing the critical safety feature of the side underride guard. NHTSA is well within its authority to issue a recall on this critical design defect, that clearly poses an unreasonable risk to highway safety.“
Meanwhile, we have been assured by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Office of Defects Investigation that they are taking this petition into serious consideration and will shortly be posting our petition online. We expect that there will then be an opportunity for anyone to submit a Public Comment on this petition.
All of this has been possible because of your prayers and support. THANK YOU.
Regards,
Jerry Karth
Perry Ponder (AngelWing inventor) & Jerry Karth at the Second Underride Roundtable
“The victory is ours but the battle is the LORD’s.“
The American Association for Justice (AAJ) supports our petition to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to recall semitrailers due to lack of side underride guards. We received a letter of support from AAJ on October 25, 2021:
Of particular significance is this statement in the AAJ letter to Secretary Buttigieg:
Van-type and box semitrailers vehicles that do not have underride guards are defective in design, under the statutory definition of defect, because they are missing the critical safety feature of the side underride guard. NHTSA is well within its authority to issue a recall on this critical design defect, that clearly poses an unreasonable risk to highway safety.
Meanwhile, we have been assured by the NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation that they are taking this petition into serious consideration. And now we wait to find out exactly what that will mean.
Here is our letter to Secretary Buttigieg on September 14, 2021, which accompanied our petition for a safety recall due to the lack of side underride guards:
Dear Secretary Buttigieg:
In accordance with 49 U.S.C. 30162 and 49 C.F.R § 552.1, please find our petition to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to promptly initiate a safety defect investigation into van-type or box semitrailers because of a known safety hazard and defect from collisions with passenger vehicles and other vulnerable road users (pedestrians, bicyclists, or motorcyclists) resulting in death and significant injuries due to a lack of side underride guards. This investigation will clearly demonstrate that NHTSA should issue a recall order pursuant to 49 U.S.C. §§ 30118(b), 30119, and 30120 for all van-type and box semitrailers that lack side underride guards.
Respectfully,
Eric Hein, Jerry and Marianne Karth, and Lois Durso
In the course of working with DC Congressional staff on the underride issue, I was introduced to another safety advocate. Steve Eimers is a dad who lost his daughter, Hannah, due to another safety issue — unsafe guardrails.
You might want to educate yourself on this roadway danger. But Steve can tell his story much better than I:
On November 1, 2016, my daughter, Hannah Eimers was driving to school with a friend in Tennessee.
Why Would We STOP Installing Unsafe Guardrails But Neglect To Replace Those Already On Our Roadways?! And, by the way, who should pay for this — besides too many precious ones gone too soon?
On September 14, 2021, a petition was submitted to NHTSA to investigate and recall semitrailers due to the lack of side underride guards which would prevent catastrophic injuries and deaths.
Dear Secretary Buttigieg:
In accordance with 49 U.S.C. 30162 and 49 C.F.R § 552.1, please find our petition to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to promptly initiate a safety defect investigation into van-type or box semitrailers because of a known safety hazard and defect from collisions with passenger vehicles and other vulnerable road users (pedestrians, bicyclists, or motorcyclists) resulting in death and significant injuries due to a lack of side underride guards. This investigation will clearly demonstrate that NHTSA should issue a recall order pursuant to 49 U.S.C. §§ 30118(b), 30119, and 30120 for all van-type and box semitrailers that lack side underride guards.
Respectfully,
Eric Hein, Jerry and Marianne Karth, and Lois Durso
We welcome letters of support to reinforce the importance of this vital recall.
