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:
Over 15 years of phasing in, SUGs on new semi-trailers would save at least 3,560 lives and prevent 35,598 serious injuries.
An SUG with an aerodynamic skirt would offset their entire cost in the first year.
A SUG regulation is cost effective because the benefits of side underride guards substantially outweigh the costs.
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 2020, I became aware of further proof that underride regulatory analysis was both flawed and non-transparent. For some reason, in 2017, the FMCSA contracted with the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center to carry out a Study of Truck Side Guards to Reduce Pedestrian Fatalities. Originally the study goals were listed on the website like this:
Five key tasks are included in this project: (1) study interaction of a potential side guard with other truck parts and accessories (e.g., fuel tanks, fire extinguisher, exhaust system) and the implications for a new Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulation; (2) investigate applicable international side guard standards; (3) perform a preliminary cost-benefit analysis of truck side guard deployment; (4) propose recommendations; and (5) propose means for voluntary adoption.“
When I found out that there were no plans to publish the completed study results, I made multiple inquiries at DOT and Congress. Some months later, after Departmental multimodal review, the results were whittled down to a literature review and finally published here:
When I realized that the majority of the report was missing, I submitted a FOIA Request asking for a copy of the entire report but was denied due to Exemption 5:
Exemption 5 protects the integrity of the deliberative or policy-making processes within the agency by exempting from mandatory disclosure opinion, conclusions, and recommendations included within inter-agency or intra-agency memoranda or letters. Exemption 5 also exempts from disclosure draft documents and recommendations or other documents that reflect the personal opinion of the author rather than official agency position. Finally, Exemption 5 exempts from disclosure deliberative records that may cause public confusion where the information were not the basis for an agency’s action or final report .
Any reasonable person could look at the conclusions from the published study and compare the data to the literature referenced and realize that there were problems. Here’s a fact sheet outlining the apparent flaws in the report published by FMCSA in May 2020:
A flawed conclusion and inconsistent crash analysis cut the apparent Vulnerable Road User safety benefit of side guards by approximately half.
This is bad. This is wrong. In the first place, the error leads to a flawed cost benefit analysis for underride rulemaking. In the second place, even the undercounted underride deaths for Vulnerable Road Users (pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists) – to the best of my knowledge – have not been included with data on underride deaths in prior NHTSA underride regulatory analysis. Really flawed cost benefit analysis.
Logic says that a flawed cost benefit analysis will lead to a faulty conclusion. The conclusion from multiple underride rulemaking efforts in the past has been that a regulation is not cost effective. In other words, those lives which could have been saved by underride regulations were not deemed worth the cost.
And, by the way, what exactly was the rationale behind leaving out information from the original study? What was DOT concerned about revealing? Would it have actually justified a side guard regulation, which would, of course, have not been looked on very favorably by many in the trucking industry? Would the study have provided a broader look at additional advantages of side guards, including their ability to increase aerodynamic fuel savings, spray reduction, wind stability, GHG reduction, or other accompanying side guard benefits?
As far as I can tell, NHTSA’s faulty analysis has resulted in “guidance” to the industry which effectively turned a blind eye to the fact that trucks with a dangerous design indisputably allow cars and Vulnerable Road Users to go under trucks and sentence thousands of road users to Death By Underride.
To compound the problem, at least in recent years, underride rulemaking has been assigned to the Crashworthiness Standards division of NHTSA in the USDOT. In my opinion, that is not a good fit. The majority of rulemaking done by NHTSA has to do with the auto industry, whereas FMCSA is the agency charged with motor carrier safety.
Furthermore, underride protection doesn’t fit the definition of crashworthiness, namely, “the ability of a car or other vehicle to withstand a collision or crash with minimal bodily injury to its occupants.“ Underride protection is installed on trucks but does not protect truck occupants. So the trucking industry gets away with claiming they’re not responsible to take care of the problem. And it isn’t a feature of the car whose occupants need to be protected, so the automakers don’t have any responsibility. Consequently, underride protection doesn’t truly fit into the current NHTSA division of responsibilities as far as I can tell. The result: on top of industry opposition, underride rulemaking seems doomed because, organizationally, it falls between the cracks.
It appears to me that this complex issue would be better suited as a multimodal collaborative project under the coordination of the Office of the Secretary rather than buried at NHTSA without suitable input from other agencies and the yet-to-be-established Advisory Committee On Underride Protection. Maybe then the Underride Initiative would get the priority status it requires and All Road Users would finally be protected from Death By Underride.
Oh, look, DOT just published their priority Innovation Principles, including this one:
The Department should identify opportunities for interoperability among innovations and foster cross-modal integration. In addition, DOT’s posture must remain nimble, with a commitment to support technologies that further our policy goals.
Will the U.S. DOT let the flawed analysis stand? Or will the coming year see significant progress in underride rulemaking? Secretary Pete, the final determination will be in your hands. Will you decide that comprehensive underride protection is warranted?
WUSA9 interviewed OOIDA (Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association) about the STOP Underrides Bill. Watch the latest segment of their truck underride investigative series in which OOIDA publicly committed themselves to supporting strengthening rear underride guard standards.
That’s great news. They’ve apparently seen the value of making truck crashes more survivable when cars rear-end trucks. However, it is puzzling to hear them, at the same time, oppose side guard technology which can also prevent people from dying under trucks — in this case, at the sides.
OOIDA said all the research – and crash tests like the one staged last year, just blocks from Capitol Hill, to draw attention to the fight for new underride safety requirements – doesn’t convince their organization side guards will be worth the investment.
“My last semi-trailer was $42,000 just with that trailer,” Pugh said. “So now we’re looking at upping the price another $2,000 to $3,000. That’s hard for a little guy to eat. That’s hard for a big guy to eat. There’s not that much profit in this business and if you want me to buy this technology and buy into this technology, you’re going to need to show me it works.” Lewie Pugh, executive vice president of the Owner-Operated Independent Truck Driver Association or OOIDA, which represents more than 160,000 members nationwide.
Pugh wants more government (read that taxpayer) funded side guard research:
Pugh says that means real-world testing. Prototypes, paid for by the government, studied by a federal agency like the Department of Transportation for effectiveness.
Perhaps he’s unaware of the side guard study conducted by Texas A&M on a contract from NHTSA (with taxpayer money) published in April 2018.
Is he aware of the untold number of hours put in by researchers and engineers to study and solve the underride problem over the past five decades? Here it is in a nutshell: History of Underride Research & Reports: 1896 to 2019
Maybe he doesn’t realize that the AngelWing side guard — successfully tested by the IIHS at 35 and 40 mph and by its inventor at 47.2 mph — has been installed on multiple trucks for several years and traveled thousands of miles without operational issues.
What exactly wouldconvince him that underride protection on the sides of large trucks — promised by DOT on March 19, 1969 — can truly mean the difference between life and death? Or that they are not “too costly”?
There are major developments in the fight to require lifesaving equipment on big rigs driving next to you on the road. Safety advocates say it could help prevent devastating crashes known as underride accidents.
One of the nation’s largest trucking groups now says it is open to some of the proposed requirements. But the question remains if the industry’s concessions will go far enough for the families of accident victims.
Super single tires (in place of the more common dual tire set-up) on semi-trailers could actually save weight, cost, and — when combined with side guards — lives! Sounds like a Win/Win scenario to me! But don’t take my word for it, read about the potential benefits in this truck driver blogpost:
Essentially, instead of having eighteen tires to support the trailer and truck, only ten will be needed because of the improved design of the tire itself. The super single truck tires can withstand the weight of the trailer and vehicle over the same time period as their dual counterparts. A study performed by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory showed that trucks could save an average of almost 3% on gas or diesel fuel. While 3% may not sound like much, over 125,000 miles and averaging five miles per gallon that results in a savings of 728 gallons per year.
In addition, the new tires actually offer more stability with a wider truck frame. However, the most interesting advantages are that these tires can hold up for about 200,000 miles as opposed to the standard 160,000 miles for the conventional tires. This means that money is saved on replacement as well since the fewer number of super singles which actually last 40,000 miles longer.
However, the main advantage that super singles offer is that they are stronger, yet lighter in weight than their standard counterparts by roughly 1,000 pounds in total. While this weight savings may translate to better fuel mileage, trucking companies see this as being able to add 1,000 more pounds to the cargo. This means that more can be hauled on a single trip which can earn the company even more money than before.
Possible Drawback (as mentioned in the video below) is what could happen when there is a tire blow-out.
Additional Citations To Check Out:
Motor carriers consider many factors — and come to different conclusions — as they evaluate wide-base tires versus standard duals for their tractors and trailers Fleets Weigh Benefits, Drawbacks of Wide-Base Tires Versus DualsTransport Topics, April 13, 2020
# Underride Deaths in 1994-2015* (FARS data) = 4,201
Take those 4,201 deaths which represent 4% of the total truck crash deaths reported by FARS to be due to underride. Convert it to a more realistic estimate of 27% of truck crash deaths which are likely due to underride. That would be 28,362 people who died between 1994 and 2015 due to preventable truck underride.
Imagine!
Now let’s take that one step further. Multiply those 28,362 underride deaths by $9.6 million — the DOT Value of a Statistical Life. That equals $272,275,200,000!
That value represents our loved ones and members of our communities who lost their lives abruptly and violently due to underride. (And that isn’t even taking into account the thousands upon thousands who were injured due to Passenger Compartment Intrusion.)
(TrailerGuard SafetySkirt side/rear underride protection system estimate $2,500)
Estimated years of service for a trailer = 15 years
$3,400/15 years = $227/yr
$227 yr./365 days = $0.62/day
So, for $0.62 per day, the trailer owner has the following benefits:
An underride crash with fatalities or life-altering injuries can take a settlement beyond insurance policy limits. Current minimum liability is $750,000; many carriers carry $1 million — large carriers may carry more.
Underride crashes can lead to bankruptcy for independent owner operators and small motor carriers.
Those opposing the bill are not doing a favor to truck drivers, owner operators, and small carriers.
Truck drivers, in general, don’t understand that underride protection will benefit them. It will save their livelihoods.
It will keep truck drivers, who are at fault in a crash, from going to jail if an underride death can be prevented.
It will decrease liability costs, which should decrease their insurance costs.
It could prevent PTSD from being involved in a fatal truck crash (no matter what caused the crash).
A “closed casket crash” impacts truck drivers for a lifetime.
If truck owners would break down the costs of adding the protection over the life of a trailer (10-15 years), it comes out to a very small amount/month — approx. $ .62/day.
Tax deduction from IRS Section 179 for safety equipment purchase.
When side guards are combined with side skirts, it can provide additional fuel savings.
By the way: Allowing underride crashes wastes all of the safety R&D which the auto industry has put into improving the safety features of cars (crush/crumple zone, airbags, seatbelts).
I have been wrestling with the question: Does NHTSA do a cost/benefit analysis before issuing a recall on an auto safety defect which has been shown to cause deaths? And if not, then why do they do a cost/benefit analysis to determine whether or not to require underride protection be put on trucks to prevent deadly underride?
Mary Barra at 0:25: “If there is a safety defect, there is not a calculation done on business case or cost. It’s how quickly we can get the repair. . .whatever needs to be done to make sure the vehicles are safe that our customers are driving.”
Mary Barra at 3:21: “Again, if it’s a safety issue, there should not be a business case calculated.”
The difference is that underride is not about an auto safety defect. It is not about occupant protection on a car, and it is not about occupant protection on a truck. It is about equipment on a truck to protect those who might collide with it. No man’s land in terms of perceived responsibility.
See this description of that dilemma from a Transportation Research Board report titled, The Domain of Truck and Bus Safety Research, May 2017, p. 135:
An added complication for safety technologies is that the beneficiaries of heavy-truck safety are primarily other drivers, not the owners or drivers of the trucks. In a highly competitive business atmosphere, truck buyers are not easily motivated to purchase new technologies solely for the public good. Added equipment must also contribute to their company’s profitability in some way and thereby enable them to compete with other companies that have not purchased the same technologies. For this reason, many new safety technologies that are developed and demonstrated are very slow to be deployed. Those safety devices that do gain widespread acceptance generally have secondary-ancillary functions or capabilities that offer a short-term payback to the buyer.
Given these realities, the federal government plays an important role in the process of introducing new safety technologies into the commercial market. Large demonstration programs, involving broad involvement of all the suppliers of a given technology and all the medium-to heavy-truck manufacturers are essential to creating both a sufficient body of data and evidence that a product or technology performs well, in addition to a sense within the industry that the product will be cost-effective and, therefore, worth buying. It is a difficult task to create this critical mass and one that often only the government can accomplish.
In some cases, regulation may be the only way to achieve significant deployment. Even when there is a general consensus that the total benefits of introduction of a new safety technology would outweigh the total costs, there is still the problem of convincing individual vehicle buyers to pay for societal benefits. A regulatory requirement would level the playing field by requiring all companies to buy the equipment and thus eliminate the competitive financial disparity. Regulations are always controversial. It is extremely difficult to quantify the benefits of a technology before the fact. The Domain of Truck and Bus Safety Research
Even though the DOT has been talking about the need for side guards on trucks since 1969, they have still not required them to be put on large trucks — despite the fact that hundreds of people die every year when their car goes under a truck. Imagine.
What will it take to get them to mandate this safety feature? So far, the successful crash test at 35 mph into a side guard in March 2017 at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has not resulted in a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on this needed safety countermeasure. Neither has the successful crash test at 40 mph, which took place at the IIHS during the August 29, 2017, Underride Roundtable, seemed to convince them to act.
Well, what if we show them that the AngelWing side guard was successfully tested at 47.2 mph by its inventor, Perry Ponder of Seven Hills Engineering? (Which would, of course, change the cost benefit analysis required for rulemaking. . . with proof of more potential lives saved!)
Side Underride Guard Test at 47.2 mph. 44 mph delta-V. Dummy results excellent. Test conducted at Karco Engineering by Seven Hills Engineering. www.7he.us. 850-222-7973.
Let’s hope that this proof, of the ability of engineers to solve a deadly problem, will wake up the sleeping giant to act decisively and issue a supplemental comprehensive underride protection rulemaking to protect us all from preventable Death by Underride — which could, of course, be mandated by an act of Congress called the STOP Underrides! Bill of 2017 (still waiting to be passed into law).
Who will have the guts (courage, conviction, resolve) to do the right thing?
Recently, NHTSA announced statistics for 2016 traffic fatalities:
37,461 people killed in crashes on U.S. roadways in 2016
Up 5.6% from 2015
Tucked in the back of the report, if you look for it, you will see that there were 4,317 fatalities in crashes involving large trucks — up 5.4% from 2015, the highest since 2007.
Of those, 722 (16.7%) were occupants of large trucks and 10.8% were nonoccupants.
72.4% of the truck crash fatalities were occupants of other vehicles, or 3,125.5 (Do I round that up to 3126? Now that really bothers me because this is about people who died in a crash with a truck last year and not merely statistics!)
If you look at NHTSA’s press release, here is their summary:
The 2016 national data shows that:
Distraction-related deaths (3,450 fatalities) decreased by 2.2 percent;
Drowsy-driving deaths (803 fatalities) decreased by 3.5 percent;
Drunk-driving deaths (10,497 fatalities) increased by 1.7 percent;
Speeding-related deaths (10,111 fatalities) increased by 4.0 percent;
Unbelted deaths (10,428 fatalities) increased by 4.6 percent;
Motorcyclist deaths (5,286 fatalities – the largest number of motorcyclist fatalities since 2008) increased by 5.1 percent;
Pedestrian deaths (5,987 fatalities – the highest number since 1990) increased by 9.0 percent; and
Bicyclist deaths (840 fatalities – the highest number since 1991) increased by 1.3 percent.
Do you see the 4,317 truck crash fatalities mentioned there? I don’t! Yet they accounted for 11.5% of the total traffic fatalities.
Is that indicative of what I continue to observe year after year — that truck crash fatalities are considered merely a transportation issue and left to the trucking industry to solve? And so potentiallives saved always lose out in any cost/benefit analysis because “CBA is weighted in favor of the regulated industry and against health, safety and environmental protections”.
And we all know who ends up paying the price for this unresolved public health & safety crisis.
Recently, NHTSA announced statistics for 2016 traffic fatalities:
37,461 people killed in crashes on U.S. roadways in 2016
Up 5.6% from 2015
Tucked in the back of the report, if you look for it, you will see that there were 4,317 fatalities in crashes involving large trucks — up 5.4% from 2015, the highest since 2007.
Of those, 722 (16.7%) were occupants of large trucks and 10.8% were nonoccupants
72.4% of the truck crash fatalities were occupants of other vehicles, or 3,125.5 (Do I round that up to 3126? Now that really bothers me because this is about people who died in a crash with a truck last year and not merely statistics!)
If you look at NHTSA’s press release, here is their summary:
The 2016 national data shows that:
Distraction-related deaths (3,450 fatalities) decreased by 2.2 percent;
Drowsy-driving deaths (803 fatalities) decreased by 3.5 percent;
Drunk-driving deaths (10,497 fatalities) increased by 1.7 percent;
Speeding-related deaths (10,111 fatalities) increased by 4.0 percent;
Unbelted deaths (10,428 fatalities) increased by 4.6 percent;
Motorcyclist deaths (5,286 fatalities – the largest number of motorcyclist fatalities since 2008) increased by 5.1 percent;
Pedestrian deaths (5,987 fatalities – the highest number since 1990) increased by 9.0 percent; and
Bicyclist deaths (840 fatalities – the highest number since 1991) increased by 1.3 percent.
Do you see the 4,317 truck crash fatalities mentioned there? I don’t! Yet they accounted for 11.5% of the total traffic fatalities.
Is that indicative of what I tend to observe — the truck crash fatalities are considered a transportation issue and left to the trucking industry to solve? And so potentiallives saved always lose out in any cost/benefit analysis, and we all know who ends up paying the price for this unresolved public health & safety crisis.
Along that line, check out this interesting read about cost/benefit analysis (which agencies have to do in rulemaking) related to safety regulations. . . https://www.foreffectivegov.org/node/2332
Even given the many uncertainties of cost-benefit analysis, proponents still argue that it acts as a neutral tool. Yet, as David Driesen points out, “if CBA only makes regulation weaker, and never strengthens overly weak regulation, it cannot improve priority setting and consistency in the manner its proponents envision.” Driesen lays to rest the argument of CBA’s neutrality by dissecting the use of CBA both in practice and theory. Driesen finds that both in OMB’s implementation of cost-benefit analysis as well as in the assumptions of the cost-benefit analysis itself, CBA is weighted in favor of the regulated industry and against health, safety and environmental protections.
Driesen focuses his look at cost-benefit analysis on the role of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), a subagency of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) charged with carrying out cost-benefit analysis through Executive Order 12866. According to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, between June of 2001 and July of 2002, OMB “significantly affected 25” environmental, health and safety regulations. If cost-benefit analysis is in practice a neutral tool, then OIRA’s use of cost-benefit analysis to review regulation would sometimes strengthen protections and sometimes weaken them. Driesen found that none of OIRA’s changes made environmental, health or safety protections more stringent, and 24 out of the 25 weakened protections. Even if cost-benefit analysis is theoretically a neutral tool, in the hands of this administration, it is certainly biased against strong public protections.
OMB tends to see cost-benefit analysis as a criterion under which the cost of implementing a regulation can never exceed the benefit. Another option is that cost-benefit analysis is used as a criterion under which cost must always equal benefit, optimizing the efficiency of the regulation. Driesen shows that in each case cost-benefit is not a neutral tool and will always favor the regulated community over the health, safety and environmental regulation.
