Recently, the Institute for Safer Trucking honored the memory of AnnaLeah and Mary with a post on their website:
We’re grateful for the special words and photos preserving their memories in this way – though bittersweet, as it records two precious lives ended far too soon.
On the way home from our recent side guard crash test in Raleigh, I saw a Carolina Trucking Academy tractor-trailer turn the corner — with side guards! The ones that Jerry helped install not too long ago. Such a good feeling.
And today, on my way home from getting groceries, I saw a tractor-trailer with a rear #underride guard which met the strength of an Insurance Institute for Highway Safety TOUGHGuard Award. I knew it for sure because it had a sticker saying so — like the one we saw on our recent trip North.
I hope that, someday soon, I won’t be so surprised to see these things because they will be commonplace and known for saving lives. I might not get so excited, but I’ll still be grateful.
While we wait for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration at the U.S. Department of Transportation to complete their side #underride research this year, we continue to do our own research to demonstrate how deadly underride can be prevented. On September 13, we did a crash test in Raleigh at 35 mph into Aaron Kiefer’s (Collision Safety Consulting) latest side guard design.
The crumple zone worked to prevent Passenger Compartment Intrusion (PCI). The windshield didn’t even crack. The airbag deployed. It was a smashing success!
As Aaron Kiefer reflects on the future, he is encouraged that the industry is starting to listen. He points out how we’ve proven that preventing side underride is possible, practical, and reasonable. He observes that we are at the edge of the beginning of the end of side underride tragedies. Aaron is hopeful that both the manufacturers and NHTSA will take note and find a way to move this forward in a timely fashion. “It’s a great time for underride safety,” says Aaron.
Raleigh engineer creating, testing truck underride crash barriers
Other media coverage:
There’s only one way to know if this safety device for trucks works: Crash a car into it: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article265716861.html
Watch a crash test of a new safety guard for tractor-trailer trucks https://www.newsobserver.com/…/local/article265742746.html
‘At first glance, it’s fairly effective’: Raleigh engineer creating, testing truck underride crash barriers https://www.cbs17.com/…/at-first-glance-its-fairly…/
We are grateful to so many people who made this important event possible and successful, including:
Remembering AnnaLeah & Mary, & countless others.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration states that their mission is to save lives, prevent injuries, and reduce economic costs due to road traffic crashes, through education, research, safety standards, and enforcement. They seem to do a decent job of informing the public with a webpage on driver assistance technologies. However, the NHTSA Truck Underride Page only contains a very short list of studies. This is the extent of entries on that page:
For a century-old problem, there is actually a wealth of research, reports, and recommendations available. As a national traffic safety leader, NHTSA could be a source of all things underride. In fact, by posting a broader set of underride specific information, NHTSA could make use of their website to better inform and inspire all stakeholders at the same time without fear of unfairly communicating with one stakeholder. This would fulfill the first purpose of the Administrative Procedures Act which “requires agencies to keep the public informed and up-to-date on agency activities.”
On September 2, “TEAM Underride” met via Zoom to discuss how we could aid NHTSA in that mission by making recommendations for additions to the NHTSA Truck Underride Page. In an attempt to be helpful, TEAM Underride participants briefly brainstormed ideas for what we thought would be useful to add to the NHTSA Truck Underride webpage, including:
Link to the underride rulemaking, including Final Rear Impact Guard Rule — Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards; Rear Impact Guards, Rear Impact Protection
Federal Register announcements for the Advisory Committee on Underride Protection (ACUP)
Link to VOLPE side guard resources, including Pedestrian-Bike Side Guards for Trucks: How They Work
Link to FMCSA study on pedestrians and side guards – Study of Truck Side Guards to Reduce Pedestrian Fatalities
GAO Truck Underride Report and status of recommendations
Links to additional underride research, including research conducted under contracts with the USDOT
Link to IIHS underride research, e.g.,
International underride regulations, e.g., Front Underride Protection, wp29regs, ECE93
That would be a good start. And we’re more than willing to help in whatever way we can to get this resource development underway.
A detailed cost benefit analysis of truck side guards was presented on August 26 at a TEAM Underride Zoom meeting. Eric Hein, father of 2015 side underride victim Riley Hein, originally completed this report in May 2021 and submitted it to NHTSA. In May 2022, he updated the analysis and report and again submitted it to NHTSA for consideration. See it here:
A cost-benefit analysis provides estimates of the anticipated benefits that are expected to accrue over a specified period and compares them to the anticipated costs. USDOT guidance ensures that the economic costs and benefits of road safety measures can be monetized and compared, leading to informed decision making. Delve into this cost benefit analysis to see how Eric arrives at these conclusions:
Then answer the question: Should Secretary Buttigieg be able to determine that a side guard regulation would be cost-effective and therefore is “warranted”?
In July 2022, eight years after our original petition was delivered to the Department of Transportation, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), whose mission it is to save lives, prevent injuries, and reduce economic costs due to road traffic crashes, through education, research, safety standards, and enforcement, took the following actions related to underride protection:
In this crash test video, the top test shows what IIHS has proven possible, the bottom test shows what the 2022 rule will require:
By refusing to revise the December 2015 NPRM to the TOUGHGuard proven level of strength, NHTSA has demonstrated an unwillingness to require that all manufacturers install these stronger guards as Standard on new trailers. To state the obvious, the result is that manufacturers may continue to offer these guards as an Option, thereby allowing the ongoing production of trailers — into the future — with guards having a known unreasonable risk of Death By Underride. How do they sleep at night knowing that their meaningless rhetoric and regulatory malpractice means many more innocent people will needlessly die?
This is nothing less than a reckless disregard for human life.
Why are we working so hard to get weak rear underride guards replaced?
Safety defect investigations are based upon complaints. That’s why we’re calling on people to help us submit UNDERRIDE Safety Problem Reports to NHTSA.
In response to our Petition for Investigation of Trailers Without Side Guards submitted to the US DOT on September 14, 2021, the Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in Washington, DC, indicated that they had only received three complaints — besides our petition — about the safety hazard posed by tractor-trailers without side guards. They subsequently denied our petition on June 22, 2022.
Of course, we know that there have been many more than three side underride deaths and serious injuries. However, we are making plans to make sure that the ODI knows this as well and are launching a campaign for submission of underride complaints of all kinds to NHTSA — side, rear, front, tractor-trailer, Single Unit Trucks, and those involving not only passenger vehicle occupants but also pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists.
We are asking that people send us crash reports for collisions with trucks which they suspect involved underride. Send them to marianne@annaleahmary.com. We will submit these as complaints to ODI.
People who would like to make their own submission can do so by following this procedure:
Instructions for Submitting an Underride Complaint to ODI
Note: Please submit a written complaint even if you are unable to obtain a VIN.
We are thankful for all who have participated, and will participate, in the efforts of Team Underride — for the saving of many lives.
This week, I discovered a U.S. News & World Report article, published on October 2, 2000, entitled, “A Safety Rule, A Fatal Flaw.” I find it enlightening that the trailer manufacturers conceded twenty-two years ago, “underride guards can save lives.” They further admitted that if they had some guidance on technical specifications from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), then they could add side guards to trailers. But the manufacturers were unwilling to spend money doing so unless they were required to install them.
How many lives could have been saved if the U.S. Department of Transportation had acted decisively at that time and initiated side guard rulemaking? Perhaps more to the point, I’d like to know if Secretary Buttigieg will act boldly now to end these senseless, preventable deaths by determining that a side guard regulation is warranted?
Back of the Envelope Math: How many side underride deaths since March 19, 1969?
It is not often that you get the opportunity to work with a great crew of people (Aaron Kiefer, Marcus Gainer, Quentin Beverly, Robert and James Gilmore, and Hyle Herwick) to accomplish something that is so meaningful, and life-saving. But I was truly blessed today to have that happen.
The Carolina Trucking Academy, owned by Charlie and Donna Gray, has been one of the biggest supporters of our efforts on this journey we have been on for years in helping prevent death by underride. Today we were able to place an AngelWing side guard on one of the Academy’s trailers.
It was, once again, an engineering challenge as the trailer was shorter than the normal 53-foot trailers we normally work with. But Aaron Kiefer — as always — came up with the modifications which were required.
Marcus went to work on the Academy trailer — cutting the holes required in the cross members for fitting the support beams in place. Meanwhile, the rest of us started the process of removing the AngelWing from the underride research/storage trailer and preparing it for its new home on the Academy trailer. Each section of the guard was carefully removed, with every bolt, nut, and washer lined up in readiness for the installation.
With dedicated teamwork, we were able to complete the installation of the AngelWing side guard on the Academy’s trailer. So now this life-saving device will be on the highways and byways in and around North Carolina –demonstrating not only great driver training but also the commitment of Charlie and Donna to have the safest equipment on the road.
Jerry Karth
Does it get any easier to remember our loss after nine years? Our lives, forever changed, have gone on — without AnnaLeah and Mary. Well, of course, we carry on. Day after day, we adjust to life without them. What else could we do? They weren’t the only people in our lives; life is still full of loving purpose. Yet it would be less than truthful to pretend that our daughters were somehow replaceable — that someone else could fill their shoes, laugh their laugh, fulfill their destiny.
Every death is hard. But when a death is unexpected, violent, and preventable, grief becomes more complicated. Knowing a loved one’s eternal destiny will be far better than anything this earthly life offers can definitely be comforting for those left behind. But when you learn that they could have been spared a horrible death due to a known unreasonable risk — that a truck crash could have been made more survivable — what do you do with the anger and frustration? And when the senseless travesty continues — at the expense of countless victims — the wound seems constantly exposed and harder to heal.
So every year the month of May, for which we had planned a family gathering to celebrate four college graduations & a wedding, brings endless reminders:
“AnnaLeah & Mary. . .They are where they belong”. . . funeral sermon on May 18, 2013.
Remembering AnnaLeah & Mary–the joy & the pain–with hope we carry on. Never have I known anything so hard to understand. . . {With Hope, Steven Curtis Chapman}
