Video & PowerPoint Slides Posted by IIHS for the Second Underride Roundtable

Truck Safety, , ,
IIHS has posted video and PowerPoint Presentations from the Second Underride Roundtable on August 29, 2017.
 
 
Afternoon Session, Part 1/Side Guard Panel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31VhLbAYlyw
 

Afternoon Session, Part 1/Industry Panel & Crash Avoidance Panel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFyf—dZV4

Every Month Passing of the STOP Underrides! Bill Is Delayed Means More Unnecessary, Preventable Deaths

Truck Safety,

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

What’s the intent of Early Warning Reporting & what’s it done to end underride?

Truck Safety, , , ,

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.

The thought of NHTSA requiring manufacturers of motor vehicles and motor vehicle equipment to report when fatalities occur involving their products is intriguing. It makes me wonder if Commercial Motor Vehicles are included in this mandate. Does anyone know the answer to this question?
If they aren’t, how can we make sure that they are? What would have to be done to accomplish this? A mandate by Congress? Some kind of an amendment to a rule by DOT? A petition requesting them to do so?

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:

  1. How this information is used currently
  2. How we could better use it
  3. What could be done to make it more useful

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)).

There are many definitions, exceptions and interpretations found in the final rule for this regulation. Requirements for manufacturers may differ depending on what type and how much of a product they produce in a calendar year. The following is a breakdown of what may be required of a trailer manufacturer.

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. 

If you are a manufacturer of 5,000 or more trailers annually, you must also submit quarterly reports with regard to the following categories:
1. Production information
2. Death and injury claims
3. Property damage
4. Consumer complaints
5. Warranty claims
6. Field reports
I then asked NHTSA to generate a report for me and this is what I received:

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.

“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