Lois Durso & I were privileged to meet with Michael Hawkins (Cool Breeze Studio) last week at his studio in South Carolina to begin work on some underride video productions. Mike just finished this short look at Death By Underride.
In memory of Roya, AnnaLeah & Mary and the countless other victims of underride
With the hope that countless other people will be spared a similar fate
Sign the STOP Underrides! Petition here: Congress, Act Now To End Deadly Truck Underride!
We were excited to receive news on June 26 that the Road to Zero Coalition (RTZ) has published a Truck Underride Priority Statement on their website.
The Road to Zero Coalition is working to end preventable deaths on U.S. roadways by 2050. With that goal in mind, the Coalition is developing Safety Priority Statements that most – if not all – Coalition members can support.
The National Safety Council leads the Road to Zero initiative in partnership with the U.S. Department of Transportation – specifically the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
A Sign-On form is now available here, so that RTZ Coalition member organizations can add their name. Coalition members (over 675 as of this date) are listed here: RTZ Coalition Members
As of June 26, 2018, the following organizations have already signed on in support of the Truck Underride Priority Statement:
We are thankful to the RTZ Steering Group for taking the time to discuss and approve this important means of providing a stronger voice for the vulnerable victims of truck underride.
Those who wish to add their voice, but are not RTZ Coalition members, can either join RTZ here: Road to Zero Coalition Membership Form
Or, write their own Letter of Support and Sign the STOP Underrides! Petition here: Congress, Act Now To End Deadly Truck Underride!
SAFETY
Reforms in safety enforcement are necessary because present levels of safety are unsatisfactory, and because authority to monitor safety practices and to sanction safety violations should be strengthened. These provisions are distinct from the economic reforms and are not made necessary by them.
The bill I propose places new emphasis on the existing fitness test which guarantees that all new entrants into the industry are safe. It also consolidates the safety authority in the Department of Transportation, and gives the Secretary of Transportation broader and more effective authority to deal with safety violations. . .
So I don’t want to hear anybody whine, “Oh, no, not another regulation!” This is a matter of protecting public health and safety — not restricting the freedoms of the trucking industry! If market forces were going to solve the problem, they would have done so decades ago. We apparently need a law to protect us.
With Hope, We Carry On: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kp7acA3CI34
Morning Session, Part 1: https://youtu.be/mmCCUIzwWjE
Morning Session, Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=Nly-FXvnrxI
Afternoon Session, Part 1/Industry Panel & Crash Avoidance Panel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFyf—dZV4
It’s a mathematical reality. The STOP Underrides! Bill was introduced in the Senate and the House on December 12, 2017. If it had been voted on and passed [even as quickly as in one month like the TREAD Act was in October 2000 in response to deaths from Firestone tires on the Ford Explorer], then the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would already be moving ahead with the process of issuing a comprehensive underride protection rule.
But it has not been brought to a vote. Reportedly, Republican Congressional Offices, and the Committees to which the Bill was referred, are waiting to hear the results of the Governmental Accountability Underride Report (GAO) — predicted to be completed by the end of January 2019.
I’m not sure exactly what people expect to learn from that report which we have not already discovered and of which we have made them fully aware — including the IIHS research, the undercounting of underrides (through studies and through errors in how our own crashes are listed in FARS reports), industry and government awareness of the problem for decades (e.g., stated intention on March 19, 1969, of adding side underride protection), ATA prediction of underride regulations 16 years ago, and NTSB underride recommendations, for starters.
No doubt about it, blood continues to be spilled on the roadways while we twiddle our thumbs. How many people do you suppose will die from Death By Underride because of this totally unwarranted delay? Possibly 700 – 2,338. Are these lives not worth saving?
Underride Deaths Not Prevented During Delay
In Passing the STOP Underrides! Bill
(These numbers do not include injuries caused by underride.)
|
Months of Delay in Passing the Bill To Date |
Deaths/month (if using the FARS data minimum of reported underride deaths) 600/yr. & 50/mo. |
Deaths/mo. (27%) 1500/yr. & 125/mo. |
Deaths/mo. (50% of total truck/car crash fatalities) 2,000/yr & 167/mo. |
|
January 2018 |
50 |
125 |
167 |
|
February 2018 |
50 |
125 |
167 |
|
March 2018 |
50 |
125 |
167 |
|
April 2018 |
50 |
125 |
167 |
|
May 2018 |
50 |
125 |
167 |
|
June 2018 |
50 |
125 |
167 |
|
Total Already Dead Since the Introduction of the Bill on 12/12/2017 |
300 |
750 |
1002 |
|
July 2018 |
50 |
125 |
167 |
|
August 2018 |
50 |
125 |
167 |
|
September 2018 |
50 |
125 |
167 |
|
October 2018 |
50 |
125 |
167 |
|
November 2018 |
50 |
125 |
167 |
|
December 2018 |
50 |
125 |
167 |
|
January 2019 |
50 |
125 |
167 |
|
February 2019 |
50 |
125 |
167 |
|
March 2019 |
50 |
125 |
167 |
|
Additional Underride Deaths While Waiting for the GAO Report to be finished before making a decision about voting on the bill |
400 |
1000 |
1336 |
|
TOTAL since bill was introduced through March 2019 |
700 |
1750 |
2338 |
Underride Deaths Not Prevented During Delay
Whom do you suppose we should hold responsible for those deaths? Or to put it in another way, who will be Bold Guardians — rather than Hesitant Bystanders — and insist that this bill is long-overdue and needs to be given high priority to vote upon and pass into law?
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee. John Donne
I sent this email out to people at NHTSA and Congressional Offices on Monday morning, June 12:
Last week, I re-read an interesting book by Michael Lemov called Car Safety Wars. One thing that caught my interest was an account of the 2000 TREAD Act in which an Early Warning Report (EWR) system was mandated by Congress.
Wouldn’t it help to improve data collection on underride tragedies if manufacturers themselves were required to report to NHTSA when fatalities occurred in collisions involving their commercial motor vehicle products — especially if it specified what was the cause of death (and not simply what caused the crash)? Wouldn’t this give valuable information to manufacturers on the need to re-evaluate the safety and efficacy of their products?
Then I went back online to dig further into this situation. This is what I discovered:
I found that Commercial Motor Vehicles are included in the TREAD Act. Therefore, I would like to know:
The Transportation Recall Enhancement, Accountability and Documentation (TREAD) Act was enacted in the fall of 2000. Its intention is to increase consumer safety through mandates assigned to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
Two major components of the TREAD Act are 1) the requirement of manufacturers to report to NHTSA when they conduct a safety recall or other safety-related campaign, and 2) the need to report information related to defects, especially in cases of injury or death related to the use of products (also referred to as “early warning reporting”(EWR)).
All manufacturers must submit quarterly reports with regard to any incident involving a death. So again, no matter the number of products your company makes, if there is a death alleged due to a failure of or during use of the product, it must be reported.
I will have to check to find out if the report is actually what I was anticipating but, as far as I can tell, this report does not include data on the thousands of truck/car crash fatalities which occur each year (on average about 4,000). Where are rest of those people?
Bottomline: The information is not being collected and reported and responded to in the manner which was the intent of the law (The TREAD Act of 2000). That, in my mind, is a problem. Had the manufacturers and NHTSA done what was required, quite possibly our daughters and thousands of others, who were in truck/car crashes after that bill was passed, would not have suffered DEATH BY UNDERRIDE. This Early Warning Reporting (EWR) system should have been able to solve the underride problem and save them.
They shouldn’t be dead.
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.
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!
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?
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?
