A proposed upgrade to rear underride guard regulations for tractor-trailers is a move in the right direction but isn’t comprehensive enough to deliver the safety gains IIHS outlined in a 2011 petition for rulemaking, especially when it comes to preventing underride in offset crashes. . .
Thank you, IIHS, for your ongoing involvement in underride protection.
IIHS was reporting on a meeting that took place on March 16, 1977 — three days before I got married! That’s almost 39 years ago — long before any of my 9 children were born, let alone my two youngest daughters, AnnaLeah and Mary!
The government and industry apparently didn’t get underride rulemaking right then! And they clearly hadn’t gotten it right by May 4, 2013 — when Mary and AnnaLeah died from truck underride! But they better watch out, because I am not going to sit by and watch while thousands more die for no good reason!
See the testimony in May 2009 by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, in which they call for tougher underride guard standards and with an attachment of the history of federal rulemaking on underride guards (pasted below): http://tinyurl.com/phlaqon
“The history of Federal rulemaking on truck underride guards:
1953 Interstate Commerce Commission adopts rule requiring rear underride guards on trucks and trailers but sets no strength requirements.
1967 National Highway Safety Bureau (NHSB), predecessor to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), indicates it will develop a standard for truck underride guards.
1969 NHSB indicates it will conduct research on heavy vehicle underride guard configurations to provide data for the preparation of a standard. In the same year the Federal Highway Administration publishes a proposal to require trailers and trucks to have strong rear-end structures extending to within 18 inches of the road surface.
1970 NHSB says it would be “impracticable” for manufacturers to engineer improved underride protectors into new vehicles before 1972. The agency considers an effective date of January 1, 1974 for requiring underride guards with energy-absorbing features as opposed to rigid barriers.
1971 National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) recommends that NHTSA require energy-absorbing underride and override barriers on trucks, buses, and trailers. Later in the same year NHTSA abandons its underride rulemaking, saying it has “no control over the vehicles after they are sold” and “it can only be assumed that certain operators will remove the underride guard.” The Bureau of Motor Carrier Safety (BMCS), predecessor to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, considers a regulatory change that would prohibit alteration of manufacturer-installed equipment. This would nullify the major reason NHTSA cited for abandoning the proposed underride standard.
1972 NTSB urges NHTSA to renew the abandoned underride proposal.
1974 US Secretary of Transportation says deaths in cars that underride trucks would have to quadruple before underride protection would be considered cost beneficial.
1977 IIHS testifies before the Consumer Subcommittee of the US Senate Commerce Committee, noting that devices to stop underride have been technologically available for years. IIHS tests demonstrate that a crash at less than 30 mph of a subcompact car into a guard meeting current requirements results in severe underride. IIHS also demonstrates the feasibility of effective underride guards that do not add significant weight to trucks. IIHS petitions NHTSA to initiate rulemaking to establish a rear underride standard. The agency agrees to reassess the need for such a standard and later in the year announces plans to require more effective rear underride protection. BMCS publishes a new but weak proposal regarding underride protection.
1981 NHTSA issues a proposal to require upgraded underride protection.
1986 IIHS study reveals that rear guards designed to prevent cars from underriding trucks appear to be working well on British rigs.
1987 European underride standard is shown to reduce deaths caused by underride crashes.
1996 NHTSA finally issues a new standard, effective 1998.”
Mariolani, J., Schmutzler, L., Arruda, A., Occhipinti, S. et al., “Impact Project: Searching for Solution to the Underride Problem,” SAE Technical Paper 982755, 1998, doi:10.4271/982755.
“Rear underride crashes kill thousands of people yearly worldwide. Underride guards did not follow the progress achieved by the automotive safety technology. . .”
Imagine an underride guard on a truck which combines protection on the rear of the truck with protection on the side. Sound good?
We have an opportunity to raise money to crash test this innovative underride guard–designed by Aaron Kiefer, a forensic engineer/crash reconstructionist in North Carolina, who after seeing horrific crashes wanted to design better protection to prevent people from dying.
See Aaron’s Public Comment on single unit truck underride rulemaking: http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=NHTSA-2015-0070-0013 “. . . side impact regulations should be considered for straight trucks but more importantly for semitrailers.
Many lives can be saved through side impact protection that is capable of redirecting passenger vehicles, pedestrians, and bicyclists from moving beneath a straight truck or semitrailer.”
We need to raise $20,000 for a crash test to test Aaron’s design at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) Vehicle Research Center. So far, we have raised $4,500 to cover the costs of a 2010 Chevy Malibu and a tractor-trailer into which the car will crash.
I received a wonderful email this morning with the Mid-Semester Progress Report from the 6-student team of engineering students at Virginia Tech who took on the creation of a better rear underride guard design as their senior capstone project.
In their words, “our team must strive to achieve the perfect design with respect to each specification, ensuring the absolute best final product.” (Sweet words to this mother’s heart!)
We look forward to seeing them in person at the IIHS Vehicle Research Center on May 5, 2016, as they share the results of their dedicated and innovative efforts at the Underride Roundtable.
I will be praying for the team everyday, including Wayne Carter (Team Facilitator), Daniel Carrasco, Kristine Adriano, Sean Gardner, Andrew Pitt, and Brian Smith–along with Jared Bryson (their Sponsor) and Robin Ott (their Project Advisor).
I remember our trip back from visiting a research & design center in June 2014 and thinking that surely a group of engineers could get together and design better underride protection. It is amazing to watch this unfold.
After a great deal of thinking and talking and preliminary planning, we now have a host facility–the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s Vehicle Research Center–and a date, Thursday, May 5, 2016, for our Underride Roundtable.
We will be reaching out to engineers, manufacturers, trucking industry representatives, regulatory officials, safety advocates, and others–inviting them to join us in a collaborative effort to bring about the best possible underride protection.
(Just a note: It doesn’t matter who is at fault in these kinds of crashes of a smaller vehicle into a larger truck; if the underride guards could prevent the smaller vehicle from riding under the truck, the tragedy of death and horrific injury could be avoided.)
“Ten automakers have committed to the government [NHTSA] and a private safety group [IIHS] that they will include automatic emergency braking in all new cars, a step transportation officials say could significantly reduce traffic deaths and injuries.”
But I am glad to see that those “watchdogs” plan on pursuing regulations for that technology. http://tinyurl.com/oc4cqy2
Michael R. Lemov in his book, Car Safety Wars, describes the impact of the passing of the Motor Vehicle Safety Act and the Highway Safety Act in 1966:
“Detroit had lost its bid to prevent federal regulation of the safety of motor vehicles and highways. The companies promised to ‘live with the bill.’ But the industry continued its efforts to weaken key safety standards under the new act. It had only temporarily lost its political clout. It raised objections to the first standards issued by NHTSA in 1968 and later, to most things the safety agency proposed. Manufacturers sent their chief executives to the White House and to President Nixon. They pressed Secretaries of Transportation. They lobbied administrators of NHTSA. They argued, often successfully, to the House and Senate Appropriations committees for restrictions on the safety agency’s funding. The car safety wars did not end.
The enactment of strong federal motor vehicle and highway safety laws marked the single biggest milestone in the century-long fight for safer cars and roads. But the long struggle against death and injury on the highways was really just beginning.” p. 106
It is important for verbal commitment to safety to be followed up with regulatory provisions to ensure that it, in fact, becomes a reality.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has just released a report on recent crash testing for one trailer manufacturer’s improved design for their rear underride guard. Vanguard has now passed the 50% overlap test–with testing still needed for the more narrow overlap test at the edges of the trailer’s guard.
Additional companies have plans to get their guards tested in the future.
Our story is featured in this fall’s edition of the organization’s Status Report. We are thankful for their efforts to research and report on this vital truck safety issue. Their previous reports helped us to better understand the weakness of the current federal regulations for underride guards.
While they provided a good summary of the history of underride guard regulation, I would like to note that they apparently overlooked NHTSA’s mention of an underride guard petition from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) in the Footnotes of the Federal Register announcement.
Marianne Karth 
IIHS
