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:

• July 5, 2022, Published the Denial of our Petition to Investigate Safety Defect of Trailers Without Side Guards.
  • Denial of Petition for Investigation of Side Guard Safety Defect
  • Response to ODI Denial of Petition to Recall Trailers Without Side Guards
• July 6, 2022, Announced the Establishment of the Advisory Committee on Underride Protection with Requests for Nomination due by August 5, 2022.
  • We are thankful that this collaborative strategy for addressing the underride problem, which we first dreamed of in 2014, is finally becoming a reality.
  • Advisory Committee on Underride Protection in MOVING FORWARD Act
• July 15, 2022, Published the Final Rear Impact Guard Rule. This long-overdue updated regulation has been in limbo since December 2015, and, unfortunately, falls short of what has been proven possible by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and nine trailer manufacturers. It goes into effect January 11, 2023.
  • NHTSA 2022 Final Regulatory Evaluation REAR IMPACT GUARD
  • IIHS Response to this rule: New federal rule on truck underride protection does not go far enough – “NHTSA’s updated rule does not go far enough to be meaningful.”
  • Petitions for reconsideration must be submitted by August 29, 2022 submitted to the Administrator, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building, Washington, DC 20590. All petitions received will be posted without change to https://www.regulations.gov, including any personal information provided.
  • Petition for Reconsideration of Rear Impact Guard Rule (July 2022)

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?