Wonderful news! WUSA9 interviewed OOIDA (Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association) about the STOP Underrides Bill. Watch the latest segment of the WUSA9 truck underride investigative series in which OOIDA publicly committed themselves to supporting a mandate to strengthen rear underride guard standards.
Read more of the story here: https://bit.ly/3awIaxU
#Underrides#BigRigs#TruckUnderrides#TruckCrash#TruckDrivers
Law enforcement officers might not always be familiar with the term underride, but they all too often are familiar with the devastation of an underride crash. For that reason, the National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA) Traffic Safety Committee was eager to provide us with a Letter of Support when the STOP Underrides! Bill was introduced.
Additionally, the NSA Board of Directors included this public health and traffic safety issue in their 2018 Resolutions. Find the NSA Underride Resolution here.
Of particular note, the Resolution states:
Be It RESOLVED, that the National Sheriffs’ Association and The National Sheriffs’ Association’s Traffic Safety Committee believe that retrofitting commercial vehicles is vital to the efforts to prevent these crashes from occurring, first and foremost and also to lower roadway deaths, injuries, and property damage.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the National Sheriffs’ Association and the National Sheriffs’
Association’s Traffic Safety Committee encourages further collaborative efforts by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; the Federal Highway Administration; the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration; the Governors Highway Safety Association; the National Sheriffs’ Association and the International Association of Chiefs of Police to monitor and collect data that properly identifies underride deaths caused by Commercial Vehicle-involved crashes.
My heroes! Thank you, NSA!
An Ohio man was killed in a horrific crash with a semi-truck on Saturday afternoon, resulting in the northbound lanes of Interstate 75 being shut down between Exit 41 in London and the Livingston Exit 49.
Eddie D. Phillips, 54, of Cincinnati, was pronounced dead at the scene of the crash that occurred near the 46 mile marker. Phillips was the sole occupant of the 2011 Mitsubishi that slammed into the rear of a 2016 Peterbilt. The driver of the semi-truck, 52-year-old Michael S. Tilotta of Houston, Texas, was not injured in the crash. He was stopped in traffic due to another accident just north of the 46 mile marker. Ohio man killed in Interstate 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.
I was reflecting tonight on the three crash tests which I viewed in less than seven days in three different states with underride prevention technology designed by three different engineering teams. All of a sudden, the question popped into my head, “How much faster would we be able to get effective underride solutions available to install on trucks if everybody that is working on the problem — or even thinking about it — would truly be collaborating?”
It is totally ridiculous that we allow marketplace competition to inhibit communication and slow down the process. How many more lives could be saved if we more effectively put our heads together?
That was the original idea when we conceived of the Underride Roundtable. Are we willing to do it like it’s never been done before and make this a joint effort?
Previous post on a similar topic: Urgent Underride Discussion of Deceleration Forces/High Speeds. Don’t Dawdle.
I sat down this Spring with Dr. David Harkey, Director of the UNC Highway Safety Research Center, to discuss the truck underride problem and the fact that it is a major public health problem and not just a transportation issue. After that, I enthusiastically recommended that he be the keynote speaker at the Second Underride Roundtable on August 20 at IIHS.
So when I found out yesterday that he had been named the new president of the IIHS — replacing the accomplished Adrian Lund, whom I got to meet in March — I was very excited. I look forward to watching him effectively lead that safety organization and help bring us closer to zero deaths.
Read about it here:
Each part of my life is somehow interwoven with the others. Today our oldest son, Isaac Karth, is on his way to give a presentation on a paper which he wrote: WaveFunctionCollapse is Constraint Solving in the Wild .
He also writes a blog on Procedural Generation: http://procedural-generation.tumblr.com/ . “In computing, procedural generation is a method of creating data algorithmically as opposed to manually. In computer graphics, it is also called random generation and is commonly used to create textures and 3D models. In video games, it is used to automatically create large amounts of content in a game.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_generation ) And in a few weeks he will start on his PhD in Computational Media. So why am I writing about that here?
Again, why am I writing about that here?
Let’s do what we can to make the system safer — including developing and utilizing crash avoidance technologies to reduce the possibility of crashes happening. But let’s not leave the human nature of the driver totally out of the picture. Let’s keep working to make sure that drivers stay engaged in the highly-complex process of driving vehicles (especially large trucks) — not less so!
Let’s figure out what can be done to make that happen — a matter of both personal and societal responsibility.
And don’t forget: Continue to make the vehicles more crashworthy — so that when crashes do occur, they will be more survivable!
In the process of writing a post on Mary’s would-have-been 18th birthday, I discovered a link to a DOT webpage on Toward Zero Deaths.
Here’s that post: Mary would have turned 18 today; but underride protection isn’t “cost-effective.”
And here is the link: Federal Highway Administration: Toward Zero Deaths .
The Department of Transportation is saying that the,
FHWA is committed to the vision of eliminating fatalities and serious injuries on our Nation’s roadways. This approach echoes the Department of Transportation’s Strategic Plan, which articulates the goal of “working toward no fatalities across all modes of travel“; the FHWA’s strategic goal of ensuring the “nation’s highway system provides safe, reliable, effective, and sustainable mobility for all users”; and the emphasis on safety that FHWA renews every year in our strategic implementation efforts.
The zero deaths vision is a way of clearly and succinctly describing how an organization, or an individual, is going to approach safety – even one death on our transportation system is unacceptable. This idea was first adopted in Sweden in 1997 as “Vision Zero” and since then has evolved across the country and across the world. A growing number of states and cities have adopted zero deaths visions under different brandings.
The zero deaths approach uses a data-driven, interdisciplinary approach that FHWA has been promoting for many years. The approach targets areas for improvement and employs proven countermeasures, integrating application of education, enforcement, engineering, and emergency medical and trauma services (the “4Es”). A combination of strategies from different focus areas will be necessary to achieve the zero deaths vision.
If that is truly the Department’s vision, then their lack of appropriate action to issue underride rulemaking falls far short of that mission. And why is that? Could it be that safety is no longer truly their priority? Are they unable to be an uncompromised voice for the victims of vehicle violence — whether there be 400 or 4,000 underride deaths/year?
Who then will advocate for safer roads?
Congress should act responsibly and pass the Roya, AnnaLeah & Mary Comprehensive Underride Protection Act. President Trump should sign an Executive Order to authorize Vision Zero Rulemaking and the Office of Management & Budget should revise their guidelines to allow agencies to conduct regulatory analysis which properly values the preservation of human health & life.
Otherwise, the Department of Transportation’s public commitment to a vision of Toward Zero Deaths is a farce. May it not be so.
Remembering Mary when she would have been 18.
Mary Lydia Karth, August 6, 1999 – May 8, 2013
Oh, and before you go, read this previous post: If Sec. Foxx & DOT are embracing Vision Zero, why do we have to fight to get a strong Underride Rule?
As we prepare to go to The Hill next week to participate in a bipartisan discussion of the Comprehensive Underride Protection Bill (RAMCUP Act of 2017; RAM = Roya, AnnaLeah & Mary), I am preparing a video to share our message. One of the things I need to do is figure out if I can find a song or musical background which expresses what I am trying to say.
I want it to convey what we are setting out to do next week on The Hill. We are going to communicate the message that this country was founded on principles of governing that promote the welfare of the people. We are going to remind our legislators that the ball has been dropped for decades and our People have not been protected from Death by Violent Underride.
We are going to remind them that they have a responsibility to use their authority and position to act decisively to ensure that people are hereon out protected from such horrific and preventable tragedies. For the People. We the People are calling on them to do so.
This is not just about trying to get members of Congress to feel sad about our losses and give us their condolences, it is about motivating them to do the right thing — to do what only they can do and make Comprehensive Underride Protection the Law of the Land.
What song will convey that message?
This dilemma reminds me of how effective this form of communication can be. It made me remember the package which I got in the mail last year telling us that our story was going to be included in a law review article titled Visualizing Rulemaking.
Here’s an excerpt from the letter in that package:
We are law professors at the University of Washington in Seattle, and we are writing because we have been deeply moved by your website in memory of your daughters and inspired by your campaign to improve truck safety by mandating new underride protections. Between the two of us, we have five children, and we now never drive on the highway without thinking about your family’s accident and the need for increased safety measures.
We found your website when we were researching and co-authoring a law review article titled “Visualizing Rulemaking,” which discusses the way that people are harnessing the power of visual images and social media to influence the federal administrative rulemaking process. We describe your rulemaking campaign as an excellent and powerful example of ordinary citizens using modern, highly visual tools to effect change in the regulatory realm. Kathryn Watts and Liz Porter
Here is their published article: VISUAL RULEMAKING ELIZABETH G. PORTER† & KATHRYN A. WATTS‡, NYU Law Review, Volume 91, Number 5
Our story is included on pages 41 and 42 (1223, 1224) and 64 (1246) of the pdf.
