Tag Archives: NHTSA

In 1969, DOT planned to add side guards after technical studies. Well, they’ve been completed. Now what?

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Well, on the way home from DC on Amtrak, I read Computer Modeling & Evaluation Of Side Underride Protective Device Designs — the 90-page side underride research report published in April 2018 by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute from a study they did through a NHTSA contract. Here are my preliminary thoughts. . .

From the report’s Introduction:

Use of side underride protection devices (SUPDs) has been suggested to mitigate passenger car underride during impacts with the side of a trailer. SUPDs attach to the frame of the trailer and act as a guard or a barrier to prevent the impacting passenger car from underriding the truck. However, attachment of additional weight to the truck is viewed unfavorably by some due to the related increase in fuel consumption and reduction in cargo capacity.

Past studies have looked at designing SUPDs for 90-degree impacts with passenger cars at speeds up to 50 mph (Bodapati, 2006; Galipeau-Belair, 2014). Different design impacts may result in different SUPD characteristics and weight. If the design impact conditions are
changed from 90-degree impacts to oblique impacts, it may be possible to further reduce the weight of the SUPDs, thus making them more favorable for use on heavy trucks.

[Besides hoping to get the trucking industry to agree to a lighter weight side guard — and assuming that they would get resistance to a rulemaking with a heavier guard], why would the Department of Transportation (NHTSA) commission a study of guards to prevent only oblique angle (less than 90 degrees) side impacts? Especially when there is talk of a weight exemption (with the legislation) for the underride safety equipment.

Presumably, these lighter weight guards would not stop cars impacting a truck at 90 degree angles. Yet, we know that many people have died and are dying from both 90 degree or T-bone crashes as well, like these two cases:

Are we going to issue a rule that will protect people from some side underride crashes but not others — even though it is technologically and practically feasible? Really?!

What was the point of designing the study that way — as directed by NHTSA? In my opinion, that research money could have been better spent — since we already have proof that cars can be stopped in a T-bone crash at 40 mph. Like on research to prevent front underride/override or to find the outer limits of rear underride protection (are the updated rear guards as strong as they could be?) — as called for in the STOP Underrides! Bill.

In 1969, DOT planned on adding side guards to trucks after technical studies had been completed. Well, they’ve been completed. We’ve been waiting almost 50 years. Will they act now?

Let’s get the Committee On Underride Protection (COUP) established immediately — as called for in the STOP Underrides! Bill. Let’s get engineers, along with an interdisciplinary team, talking together and collaboratively communicating to inform effective actions. Daylight’s burning!

Note: As I hear from engineers, I will share their feedback as well.

 

Heidi King, NHTSA Nom. Hearing: Ranking Member Bill Nelson Opening Statement

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The Senate Commerce Committee held a nomination hearing on May 16, which included Heidi King, nominee for the position of NHTSA Administrator. Senator Nelson (D-FL), Ranking Member, gave some opening remarks, including:

During today’s hearing, I hope Ms. King will provide a detailed plan on how she will demand accountability from those involved in the Takata fiasco and finally implement a real strategy to help drivers get safe airbags in their vehicles as soon as possible.

NHTSA also needs to do more to increase highway safety, including truck safety. 

One way to do this is to have more use of underride guards on trucks so that cars don’t slide underneath during collisions. 

The addition of this safety shield could have helped saved the lives of many, including Lois Durso’s daughter Roya. Lois is here today, along with other tireless advocates.

And I hope Ms. King has some answers for the Durso family on that issue.  They certainly deserve it. 

https://www.commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/hearings?Id=6D165DA3-EA0F-4F1C-B1D1-A039BE79107D&Statement_id=1FB88826-73AA-49B2-8EEB-6756A07A33B7

Heidi King was grilled extensively about NHTSA’s inaction on several auto safety issues. I only wish that she had been asked to address the ongoing underride problem.

New NHTSA Study: Computer Modeling & Evaluation Of Side Underride Designs

Safety Advocacy, Truck Safety, , , , ,

NHTSA has finally released the report from the side underride study which they commissioned Texas A&M to do in 2016-2017. Here is the press release:  https://www.nhtsa.gov/crashworthiness/truck-underride

The study: Computer Modeling and Evaluation Of Side Underride Protective Device Designs

More later on our analysis of the research.

Knee-jerk reaction: I am glad that they finally proceeded with technical studies on side underride. But countless lives have been lost since 1969 when DOT announced that they intended to extend underride protection on the sides of large trucks after technical studies were completed.

It is high time for someone to act responsibly. Either Senator Thune can respond and move the STOP Underrides Bill forward, or NHTSA can act on its own and do supplemental comprehensive underride rulemaking. Either way, many lives will be saved.

If they refuse to act appropriately, who should bear the blame for continued preventable underride tragedies?

Hearing to Consider Heidi King to Head Natl Highway Traffic Safety Administration

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Lois and I met with Heidi King in March to discuss the underride problem. We are looking forward to the upcoming hearing which could put her in a key leadership role — enabling her to appropriately address underride.

May 16, 2018

Nominations Hearing

U.S. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, will convene a hearing at 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, May 16, 2018, to consider three presidential nominees.

Completed nomination questionnaires are available at www.commerce.senate.gov/nominations

Witnesses:

  • Mr. Joseph Gruters, of Florida, to be a Director of the Amtrak Board of Directors
  • Ms. Jennifer Homendy, of Virginia, to be a Member of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)
  • Ms. Heidi King, of California, to be Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)

*Witness list subject to change.

Hearing Details:

Wednesday, May 16, 2018
10:00 a.m.
Full Committee

This hearing will take place in Russell Senate Office Building, Room 253. Witness testimony, opening statements, and a live video of the hearing will be available on www.commerce.senate.gov.

What are we waiting for? People continue to die from underride crashes. Solutions are available.

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Four more reasons to move forward with the STOP Underrides! legislation.

Why Has the Truck Underride Problem Been Left Unchecked for Decades?

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Truck underride is what frequently happens when a passenger vehicle collides with a large truck. Because the truck was unfortunately defectively designed to be above the level of the crush zone of the smaller vehicle, the passenger vehicle goes under the truck and the crashworthy safety features of the car are not able to work. Or, to put it another way, the truck enters the occupant space of the passenger vehicle — too often resulting in horrific death and debilitating injuries.

Hundreds of people die this way every year — the victims of senseless, preventable death by underride.  Yet, for decades, this problem has been left unchecked. Little has been done to preserve the occupant space and make truck crashes more survivable. Why is that?

Basically, the government has waited for the trucking industry to prove that it could do something to prevent these deaths. The trucking industry, for its part, has been waiting for the government to tell it whether or not, and how, to address this problem — before devoting R & D resources to it in order to come up with solutions. Meanwhile, the unsuspecting traveling public is left vulnerable and precious blood continues to be needlessly spilled on our roads.

Stalemate. Catch 22. Limbo. Standstill. Impasse.

The STOP Underrides! Bill will break this deadlock and get the ball rolling so that creative engineers can put effective underride protection on every truck — resulting in more truck crash survivors who can live to see another day.

This bill has been drafted by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. On December 12, 2017, Senator Gillibrand, Senator Rubio, and Congressman Steve Cohen will be introducing it in Congress.  They are all seeking Republican co-sponsors for this long-overdue, life-saving legislation.

Sign & Share the STOP Underrides! Bill Petition here: Congress, Act Now To End Deadly Truck Underride!.

Find out more about underride at our Underride Guards Page.

“Even if cost-benefit analysis is theoretically a neutral tool. . . it is biased against strong public protections.”

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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 potential lives 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.
 
Previous posts on this issue:

History of Truck Underride Recommendations in the U.S.

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A senator’s Office recently asked me to provide them with a one-page history of reports and recommendations made on the truck underride problem in the U.S. Here it is (with clickable links):

Truck Underride Reports & Recommendations in the U.S.

Just in: Truck Underride Statistics by State From NHTSA & IIHS

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Yesterday I contacted NHTSA and IIHS and asked them if they would be able to look at their data on underride deaths and break them out by State. They both graciously made it a priority and created some new charts, graphs, and a map.

The pdf from NHTSA has data taken from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), by which NHTSA collects information on fatal crashes from each state. This extensive chart covers the time period of 1994 to 2015, showing underride deaths when the initial collision was at the front, side, and rear of trailers — first for the country, followed by a similar format for each state. Numbers are shown one year at a time and then totaled:

Passenger Vehicle Underride Fatalities by State, 1994-2015, by NHTSA

Please remember that it is well-known that underride deaths are under-counted in these charts. In fact, Lois Durso and I both have found that our daughters deaths are not accurately reported in these charts.

We also received a graph of underride deaths by State for 2015 from Matt Brumbelow at the IIHS. Specifically, these are “2015 Passenger vehicle occupant fatalities in 2-vehicle crashes with tractor-trailers.”

Matt asked me to explain further, “that 2015 is still the latest year of data that NHTSA has released.  Also, that while not all these crashes will have involved underride, our estimates based on other studies is that underride occurs in 80-90% of tractor-trailer rear and side crashes with serious/fatal injuries.”

PV Fatalities in Truck Crashes 2015 per IIHS

U.S. Map PV Fatalities Truck Crashes in 2015 per IIHS

I hope that these visual and informative tools will aid us, as a nation, in addressing this tragic but preventable public health problem.

Australian Engineer Comments on U.S. Underride Protection

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See a paper by Raphael Grzebieta and George Rechnitzer here: Proposed Australian/New Zealand AS/NZS 3845.2 Standard for Truck Underrun Barriers: Design, Testing and Performance Requirements

2 Moms, Sick & Tired of Waiting, Draft Truck Underride Legislation

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