Tag Archives: Chicago Cubs

What Do Baseball & Truck Underride Have In Common?

Now, I’m only a Cubs fan by marriage. Early on in that marriage, I learned what a die-hard fan is and joined the club. But I’m not as familiar with historical details as my husband. Like, what’s with the 1969 Cubs?

However, I have become acquainted with truck underride history and know that, in 1969, our U.S. Department of Transportation was working on rear underride guard rulemaking — though it never became law until 1996 — and said that they intended to add side underride protection on trucks. Never happened.

After losing AnnaLeah and Mary in 2013 due to rear underride, I was, of course, very interested in the updated rear underride guard rule in July 2022. In fact, I was quite disturbed to learn that NHTSA blew an opportunity to require a level of underride protection proven possible by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and nine trailer manufacturers, who were given the TOUGHGUARD award — further evidenced as technically feasible by the survivor of a 2017 rear end truck crash.

Imagine my further consternation when I learned that at least part of the basis for that July 2022 Rear Impact Guard Rule was a NHTSA “engineering judgement concern” for “potential rotation outboard.” What that means is that if the rear guard were stronger at the outer edges of the tractor trailer, that is strong enough to prevent underride, then the car upon collision might rotate or spin out into traffic and collide with another vehicle causing a secondary collision — what the industry dubs “unintended consequences.”

Rear Retrofit Crash Test

Ha! The reality is that a secondary crash such as that would be so much more likely to allow the crashworthiness features (crumple zone, airbags, seat belt tensioners) of the involved vehicles to protect the occupants as intended. Was that really their rationale? Allow people to die under a trailer so that some other fender bender, i.e., non life threatening crash, wouldn’t occur?

I asked an engineer at a university to weigh in on this concern during a February 24, 2023, Friday brown bag lunch TEAM Underride Zoom discussion. Here are the rather garbled notes I jotted down: . . . fear that it would go out into the traffic; misplaced fear; projecting less inertia as it is deflected out from hitting truck — missing the fact that there is no catching equipment on a trailer — energy absorption — the trailer does not catch the car. If it collides at the rear corner, With or without guard it will rotate. The reason rotation takes place. . . because it is the 30% offset. Unintended Consequences.

I asked him to write up his thoughts for me to share and Jared Bryson, Smart Road Operations and Mechanical Systems Innovation Director at Virginia Tech, graciously and creatively obliged.

Baseball & Underride

I’d say that well-thought out explanation should be taken into consideration during a careful review of the July 15, 2022 rear underride guard rule and the questionable (my words) NHTSA decision to decline from requiring life-preserving underride protection at the outer edges of the guard. It’s guaranteed to mean the difference between life & death for more than one person in the days ahead.

Why are we working so hard to get weak rear underride guards replaced?

FARS Coding of a Sample of Rear Underride Crashes

1969 Chicago Cubs Baseball a Thing of the Past; Same Year DOT Planned to Require Side Guards on Trucks

I recently moved into a new house. This morning I passed a box that has yet to be unpacked.  In some past move, I had labeled it “1969 Chicago Cubs Mug” (owned by my diehard Cubs fan husband Jerry).

That caught my attention because, in the last few years, the year 1969 (a fateful Cubs season, now a Thing of the Past) sticks out in my mind as the year that DOT said that they intended to “extend underride protection to the sides” of large trucks.

Well, that would have been wonderful if they had actually done so. But they did not.

Hundreds of people every year could have survived truck crashes. If we estimate 200 people each year, who could still be alive had side guards been required on every truck, times the 49 years since that fateful 1969 baseball season, that would be 9,800 people — almost 10,000 deaths that could have been prevented.

Add to that another 800/year from front and rear underride deaths = 39,200. Almost 50,000 deaths could have been prevented with comprehensive underride protection.

Let’s all work together to make sure that, in the next 49 years, it will be a different story and Death By Underride will become a Thing of the Past.

Previous related post: March Historically a Momentous Month for Truck Underride Safety Advocacy; Beware the Ides of March!