More research on side underride has just been published by SAE International following a presentation by Garrett Mattos of the Friedman Research Center at a SAE Conference. Hopefully, the Department of Transportation now has enough research to make good on their March 19, 1969 intention to add underride protection to the sides of large vehicles.
A tractor-trailer, with and without side impact underride protection, was impacted by a passenger car and SUV under a range of impact conditions. Passenger vehicle intrusion metrics were calculated to provide an indication of relative risk for each impact condition. The results can support the development of side underride protection recommended practices. Protecting Passenger Vehicles from Side Underride with Heavy Trucks
In 2016, Aaron’s team conducted a full overlap rear crash test at approximately 35 mph closure. This test, which was conducted on a reinforced trailer that had already suffered significant rear collision damage. The lightly reinforced rear guard wasn’t able to prevent underride. (TrailerGuards.com)
Aaron’s team has continued to develop trailer underride guards. Recently, they crashed a reinforced trailer with a 2012 Chevy Impala at 38 mph and approximately 25% overlap. This test illustrated that bolt on reinforcements can prevent deadly underride and passenger compartment intrusion (PCI).
Video of Crash Test into a 2005 Vanguard Trailer with a reinforced rear underride guard at 38 mph on January 25, 2020:
Compare that to a crash test by IIHS of a Vanguard 2013 trailer with a weak rear underride guard at 35 mph — at 8:28 on this video:
Crash car after the 38 mph collision into the rear of a tractor trailer: No Passenger Compartment Intrusion (PCI) Hallelujah!!!
Compare that to the initial design of the Rear Reinforcement Attachments on March 12, 2016:
Now that we have proof that these lightweight aluminum plates can prevent deadly underride, should we simply encourage voluntary adoption of this life-saving safety solution? Or should we require every truck in the U.S. to install safety equipment which can meet that level of performance?
In other words, are we going to make it the law to install equipment which can prevent underride when passenger vehicles collide with the rear of large trucks?
Eight major trailer manufacturers have designed stronger rear underride guards to withstand a crash test at 35 mph all the way across the back of the trailer — earning them the TOUGHGuard Award from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). This is significant because their previous designs — though meeting the current federal standard for rear guards — have been proven too weak and ineffective by IIHS.
There are about 300,000 new trailers sold every year. Some manufacturers are selling the stronger guard as Standard on all new trailers. Others are selling it as an Option, meaning that trailers may still be sold with guards known to be too weak to stop cars and save lives.
In addition, if we don’t retrofit the existing 11 million+ trailers with stronger guards — which will meet the TOUGHGuard criteria (plus side and rear underride protection) — it will be years before the entire fleet will be safer to drive around.
Fortunately, some of the trailer manufacturers have a retrofit kit for the rear guards, so that a trucking company could theoretically purchase kits to make their trucks safer. However, without a mandate to do so, I don’t imagine that will happen too quickly.
But I am encouraged by the work of Aaron Kiefer, a North Carolina crash reconstructionist who has seen so many underride tragedies that he decided to design some solutions on his own — primarily out of his own pocket and on his own time, with the support of his family who share their husband and dad with his life-saving project.
Just this weekend, Aaron installed the latest version of his Rear Reinforcement Attachment to a 53 foot trailer. Over the last five years, Aaron has been developing a design for two aluminum triangles, which are fastened to both sides of the trailer and then attached to both ends of the existing rear underride guard.
The latest version installed on September 15, 2019.
This reinforces the strength of the rear guard — improving its capability to stop a car and prevent underride. But it, also, serves as the point of attachment for Aaron’s side guard invention, the SafetySkirt — polyester webbing which can be combined with a side skirt to both save fuel and save lives.
A previous version of the Rear Reinforcement Attachment and SafetySkirt system.
You can see the SafetySkirt being tested at the D.C. Underride Crash Test Event on March 26, 2019:
We are looking forward to the day when Aaron’s SafetySkirt System can be tested at IIHS to prove its usefulness as an affordable, lightweight solution, which could theoretically be available as an option to retrofit any truck on the road with effective side and rear underride protection.
Aaron, like Perry Ponder who invented the AngelWing side guard, and countless other engineers, who should be given a green light to solve the underride problem, are amazing members of my Underride Hero Hall of Fame — along with my husband Jerry who has contributed a wealth of ideas in this underride advocacy journey.
Allen and Donna Smith, trucker advocates, host the Ask the Trucker Radio Talk Show. Underride was discussed on the show in March 2018 and again on April, 27, 2019. We appreciate their open mind and willingness to draw attention to this issue and foster open and honest conversation with truck drivers. Listen in here:
We strive for facts & truth rather than talking points. Truckers have valid concerns about underrides and we want to address them. Proponents of underrides also have legitimate concerns for supporting the Stop Underrrides Act. Let’s hear both sides.
Guests on the show:
Jerry and Marianne Karth and Lois Durso advocates for Underrides and have lost loved ones due to Underride crashes. These underride deaths were not the fault of either 4 wheeler. One was an improper truck lane change, the other was icy roads.
Perry Ponder, inventor of AngelWing, engineer with an accident reconstruction engineering company
Aaron Kiefer, forensic engineer & crash reconstructionist, inventor of SafetySkirt
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!
. . . several entrepreneurs—not to mention truck manufacturers—have been working to develop new side and rear guards. One of these entrepreneurs is Aaron Kiefer, founder of Collision Safety Consulting, a North Carolina-based outfit whose TrailerGuard system reinforces the rear of a truck and also features a “SafetySkirt” that extends along the side of a tractor-trailer, one which can potentially prevent vulnerable road users and cars from going underneath a truck.
In the following Failure Magazine Interview, Kiefer discusses the safety issues surrounding underride accidents and how the TrailerGuard system has the potential to protect side and rear underride crash victims from death and catastrophic injuries.
TrailerGuard: Making Underride Accidents Less Deadly, First in a series of articles about the truck underride issue — by Jason Zasky, failuremag.com
Successful side guard crash test at 33-34 mph — one year after we helped Aaron Kiefer with his first one. No Passenger Compartment Intrusion (PCI). If this had been a real-life crash, the people in the car would not have experienced deadly, severe underride of the side of the truck.
Lengthier video shows the construction of the side guard, as well as the prep work and aftermath clean-up by Aaron’s volunteer crew:
Thank you, Aaron, for your confidence that this is a solvable problem — and your commitment to follow this project through to its life-saving goal.
NBC News received a letter from the Truck Trailer Manufacturers Association about the Today Show investigative report on Side Underride. After further investigation, NBC News added this to their article on the report:
Update and correction: After the publication of our story, we received a letter from the Truck Trailer Manufacturers Association (TTMA), which argues that our report overstated the simplicity of the side guard fix and that prototypes have been technical and commercial failures. TTMA made the same argument to NHTSA in a letter we referenced in our report, which you can read here. They also told us that TTMA has not made any political donations to lawmakers on the issue of side underrides, including to Senator Thune. In response to other points made by TTMA, we have updated our online report with TTMA’s response that guards in Europe are focused on protecting bicyclists and pedestrians, not automobiles and that NTSB said injuries and deaths “could” be reduced by side guards, instead of “would.” We also have updated campaign finance data, broken out donations from the trucking sector of the transportation industry, and corrected the period during which those donations were made.
I previously wrote about the TTMA’s May 13, 2016 letter to NHTSA about side guards. Read it here.
Despite the TTMA’s objections to the report, the fact remains that almost as many people die from side underride crashes each year as from rear underride crashes. And, furthermore, I have seen with my own eyes the difference that side guards can make in stopping deadly underride.
Will we let the technical and commercial failures of side guard prototypes in the past stop us from keeping at the task of solving this problem? I thank God for people like Aaron Kiefer and Perry Ponder who have kept at it until they successfully proved what human ingenuity could do to save lives.
Note: In fact, Europe’s side guard standards are designed to protect pedestrians and cyclists — which the U.S. should do, too! But Europe does not require the prevention of cars from underriding trucks. I have been in communication with a global automotive regulation specialist, and I hope that what happens here in the U.S. will have a ripple effect globally.
Could a crash test between a Tesla car and a trailer with a side guard turn out differently than Joshua Brown’s tragic crash with his Tesla into and under the side of a trailer without a side guard?
Would Elon Musk be willing to partner with us to discover the answer?
Could a crash test* between a Tesla & a side guard silence the skeptics?
* Multiple crash test scenarios could be utilized to compare with and without side guard, with Tesla and with a Malibu (or similar model), with Airflow Deflector/Perry Ponder’s AngelWing and with Aaron Kiefer’s TrailerGuard System.
Great progress is being made in underride protection on the sides of large trucks in the month of January 2017. While Aaron Kiefer is preparing for a crash test of his innovative TrailerSafe System side/rear guard on January 20 in North Carolina, Airflow Deflector tested Perry Ponder’s Angel Wing side guard design in New York.
The Angel Wing crash test was declared a success: the side guard prevented the side of the trailer from going past the windshield thus promising protection from Passenger Compartment Intrusion (PCI). In other words, it is likely that, due to the side guard in combination with the crashworthiness of the car, no one would have been killed or seriously injured by the collision between the side of this truck and a smaller passenger vehicle.
Side underride is not a new problem. For too long, nothing has been done about it. Yet here are two unique and innovative solutions to protect us from deadly side underride. Two Life-Savers.
I count myself privileged to be cheering these innovative and compassionate engineers on in their important work which will save countless lives. Now, here’s to getting these marvelous inventions onto the trucks we all drive around each day. . .
