The director of KidsAndCars.org, Janette Fennell, wants us to help get technology in cars to prevent kids from getting life behind and dying in hot cars. This is her plea:
. . .four children have died in hot cars since Friday. Two on Friday, (Williamsport, PA & Navarre, FL) one on Saturday (Rocky Comfort, MO) and yet another one on Sunday. (Dallas, TX)
We simply cannot accept these deaths as tragedies and move on. KidsAndCars.org is the only organization that has been in the forefront, working to ensure technology is added to vehicles that can prevent these heartbreaking deaths.
PLEASE add the Look Before You Lock safety messages to your website, articles, TV segments, billboards and anywhere you can reach people who care for our children. Yes, it takes a village…
What is the answer? PLEASE work with us to make sure that technology is finally added to vehicles to prevent these horrific deaths. The auto industry already recognizes that we’re human and our memories often fail us. Today our cars are able to warn us if we leave our headlights on, our keys are in the ignition, our car door is open, if we are low on gas and if our seat belt isn’t buckled.But if a child is left behind, it can be fatal. So we believe it’s reasonable to believe that technology can provide an alert if a child is left alone in a vehicle.
This problem shouldn’t take years to resolve. WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?!?!?!?!?!?!?
If we can take away anything immediately (while waiting for an in-depth investigative report) from Joshua Brown’s fatal crash with his Tesla, I hope it is the understanding that preventing Death by Underride cannot depend solely on crash avoidance technology. What we should be going for is not either/or but both/and.
The Tesla did not prevent the crash because the side of the truck was too high up to engage/connect with any of the safety technology. Had a side guard — which is not a federal requirement — been on the truck, there might have been no crash or at least no underride. Joshua Brown might still be alive.
This is a clear case where even the most-advanced crash avoidance technology was not able to prevent a tragic underride death. If side guards had been mandated and installed, perhaps the outcome would have been quite different.
There are too many factors and conditions which can result in a collision between a large truck and a smaller passenger vehicle. And without adequate underride protection, the smaller vehicle is going to end up under the larger, too-high truck so that the crashworthy features of the car do not function as intended. The truck then comes into the occupant space [Passenger Compartment Intrusion = PCI] — causing horrific death or serious injuries.
My goodness, it makes me mad just to re-read the posts which I have written over the last three years since our deadly (for those who experienced underride) crash and recall the ongoing attitude of non-responsibility of some parts of the trucking industry to do their part in helping to solve this solvable problem!
I have included the links to those posts along with the beginning paragraphs:
Clarifying the ATA Position on Underride Guards After last week’s announcement by NHTSA of their initiation of the rulemaking process for underride guards, I have had four interviews. So far, I have seen two of the articles and both of them included a statement, obtained from the American Trucking Associations (ATA), which disturbed me when I read them. I posted about it and you can read my thoughts here. . .
The Passion of This Safety Advocate It gets really tiresome to hear the trucking industry come up with the same statements time after time after time. Nearly every time I read an article written about our crash, there are the obligatory responses from the trucking industry. Invariably, they try to shift the responsibility off of themselves to make the changes sought after and, instead, bring up some alternative solution to the “problem.” . . .
Truck Underride Roundtable is one week away! May it be sehr gut! On June 25, 2014, after a tour of the research & design center of a truck trailer manufacturer in Georgia, I wrote down these perplexing thoughts about the too-long unresolved underride problem: Now, it is understandable, amid the multitude of demands and the tyranny of the urgent, that—without a ready solution, in fact, one which would require time and money to develop—this problem has not been given much attention. But, if those who bear responsibility for making sure that this problem gets solved (one way or another) had lost two of their beloved children—or any other loved one—I can guarantee you that they would have moved heaven and earth to find a way to prevent underride. . .
UMTRI Reviews Opposition to Proposed & Proven Truck Underride Prevention Measures Back in 1989, the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute examined features proposed for improving truck safety. In other words, they reviewed NHTSA underride rulemaking from years past. What they discovered was that a proposed underride rule in 1977 was opposed by practically “the entire trucking industry – both manufacturers and haulers.” The authors of this study noted “that failure to implement a rule on underride guards took place despite extensive research indicating their expected effectiveness.” . .
When we met with DOT in March 2016 to deliver our 20,000+ Vision Zero Petition signatures, Blair Anderson (NHTSA Deputy Administrator at the time, now US DOT Undersecretary for Policy) smiled when I made the point about not either/or but both/and. He indicated that the Director had just been talking with staff about that very thing.
Let’s hope that this logical line of reasoning is widely understood and serves the purpose of moving both rulemaking and voluntary industry safety advancement full steam ahead.
My grandson just turned 10 years-old. Lately I’ve been noticing little things that show me how much he is maturing and taking responsibility. And I keep thinking how proud AnnaLeah and Mary would be of him. They both spent so much time with him from the time he was born.
One thing Marcus asked me about the other day was when he saw my copy of the book Car Safety Wars by Michael Lemov. Car safety wars, he asked? So I had to try and explain it. I asked him what a war is and what happens in a war. And we talked about how it’s a war because while we’re “fighting for” some things to make cars and roads safer, other people are fighting against them.
Imagine.
AnnaLeah would have been 21 now and Mary would be turning 17 in a few weeks. But they’re not. And at least part of the blame for their deaths by preventable vehicle violence can be attributed to “car safety wars”. They, and countless others, paid the price. Casualties of the traffic safety war.
The 2016 Democratic Party Platform is quite lengthy and I am sure contains many things of interest to many Americans. But the federal government has one role that is unquestionable: to protect its citizens.
. . . the right to protection was not merely a matter of constitutional theory, but a doctrine with concrete legal meaning. In the common law tradition, the protection of the law implied both the recognition of fundamental rights by law, and the enforcement of such rights by government. The paradigmatic instance was the government’s duty to protect individuals against violence. By the middle of the nineteenth century, this duty was understood to include not only the enforcement of civil and criminal law with respect to injuries already committed, but also the responsibility to prevent violence before it occurred. THE FIRST DUTY OF GOVERNMENT: PROTECTION, LIBERTY AND THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT
Deadly underride can happen to anyone at any time. Even to the best driver in the safest car.
According to the American Trucking Associations, there are currently 12 million trucks on the road. Most of those trucks have weak and ineffective underride guards. Hopefully, government regulators and the trucking industry will take steps to make future trucks safer to be around.
But they aren’t likely to do anything about the 12 million trucks already on the road–even though there is safety technology to do so. You’ll just have to take your chance that you won’t be at the wrong place at the wrong time.
So, why is it that we are powerless to do anything except agree to whatever the trucking industry is willing to do? Whose lives are we willing to give up to pay the price by settling for less than the best?
“In 2014, for the sixth consecutive year, motor vehicle traffic crashes were not among the top 10 causes of death in the United States. Motor vehicle crashes were the 13th leading cause of death from 2012 to 2014. When ranked by age, motor vehicle traffic crashes were the number one cause of death among people 16 to 24 years old for each year 2012 to 2014. Motor vehicle crashes were also the number one leading cause of death for 11-year-old children in 2014, as well as for 4-year-old children in 2013.”
After losing our two youngest daughters, AnnaLeah (17) and Mary (13), due to a truck underride crash on May 4, 2013, our family has taken on the goal of improving the regulatory and voluntary standards for currently weak and ineffective truck underride guards. On May 5, 2016, we were co-sponsors, with IIHS and the Truck Safety Coalition, of an Underride Roundtable.
As we have participated in safety advocacy, we have become aware of the challenges often faced by those who seek to bring about greater safety through legislative or rulemaking means. Because we have observed that the industry’s lobby exerts a great deal of influence and has been successful in delaying proven safety measures, we have petitioned the federal government to adopt a Vision Zero Rulemaking Policy.
In order to understand the details of our vision to bring about a process that would truly be concerned about saving lives more than saving profit, please see our Vision Zero Petition Delivery Book:
We have not received any feedback from the White House or from the Department of Transportation in response to our petition. Therefore, we are proceeding to call upon experts in law to research this timely topic and write law review articles to shed light on the appropriateness of our requests to re-shape the process through which this country’s citizens are meant to be protected.
It is our hope that students of the law, as well as law professors, judges, and legal practitioners, will take it upon themselves to clarify the process by which safety measures – which are proven to save lives and/or prevent serious injuries – are determined to be cost effective or not, and what exactly that means. We will compile the results (or links to published articles) and make them publicly available.
Please send questions and submissions to:
Marianne Karth
marianne@annaleahmary.com.
We will accept reviews at any time but encourage law students to incorporate this project into their university schedule. Please share this post with others whom you think would be interested in this opportunity to change the face of traffic safety rulemaking.
Lou Lombardo can hardly believe the theme of the Republican Convention, Make America Safe Again, when he looks at the nation’s political record on Vehicle Violence. See his thoughts on this travesty:
Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:
2016 Republican Convention
Today’s theme at the Republican Convention is “Make America Safe Again”. Really?
As my 7 year old grandson taught me “With great power comes great responsibility.” (He learned it from Spiderman.)
Today we have an America where “With great power comes great immunity.” Immunity is enjoyed by both government and industry executives regardless of how many people die, are disabled, and bankrupted by vehicle violence.
So why does the President of the U.S.A. not adopt a Vision Zero Goal?
President Obama: Meet Marianne Karth. She has gathered 20,000 signatures on a petition to you to adopt a national Vision Zero Goal. “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Proverbs. See https://annaleahmary.com/
I originally set out to highlight comments relative to the flaws in NHTSA cost/benefit analysis. While the document which I put together does that, it actually has much more as it has a link to each of the Public Comments on the currrent underride rulemaking — with some of the highlights copied and pasted from the Federal Register.
It is an incomplete document and could have been done better but it took forever as it is and I hope that it will prove useful to someone.
These are the links to the rulemaking documents themselves:
NPRM Upgrade Underide Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Rear Guards for Tractor-Trailers
