After the success of our AnnaLeah & Mary Stand Up For Truck Safety Petition, our daughter, Rebekah, set up a Twitter account to help us raise awareness about truck safety issues.
As I was browsing Tweets one day, I was intrigued by a “Thank you!” to Dr. Dean Sicking for SAVING MANY LIVES through the SAFER barrier he designed for NASCAR. SAFER = Steel and Foam Energy Reduction:
Great shout out to one of the major safety innovators in auto racing. How many lives has Dean Sicking’s work saved? http://usat.ly/1E21Xws “
I called Dean and told him our story; then I asked him if he thought he could use the same technology to design safer underride guards. He said, “Yes!” And, a few weeks later, he sent me a detailed proposal for an Underride Prevention Research Project:
Development of Trailer Underride Preventive Measures
The only problem is that we have not found anyone who is putting money toward underride research. Not a priority. So, now we are launching a fundraising campaign to raise $200,000 to fund Dr. Sicking’s Underride Research Project–along with a college senior design underride project and additional promising underride research by engineers who share our concern about the current underride requirements and think that they can come up with a more effective solution.
Plans are also underway for an Underride Roundtable in Spring 2016 to bring together engineering experts and industry representatives. We also hope to publish a compilation of all this underride research to be made available in print as well as downloadable.
Please help us prevent future unnecessary deaths due to underride crashes. Every $1 contributed to this cause will help us toward our goal of supporting underride research, which will make it possible to manufacture safer trucks and, as a result, save other families the heartache of such tragic loss.
AnnaLeah & Mary for Truck Safety is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and is eligible to receive contributions that may be tax deductible for the donor. Your donation will help fund research that will save lives!
AnnaLeah & Mary for Truck Safety, Articles of Incorporation filed with the State of North Carolina
To donate online, go to:
http://fortrucksafety.com/
Then SHARE this need with your friends using the sharing icons provided on that website. Thank you for your help.
For more information about AnnaLeah & Mary’s story and for details about the underride guard issue, go to: https://annaleahmary.com/underride-guards/
Printable & clickable brochure: ALMFTS Underride Guard Research Brochure
IIHS Report on truck underride crash tests and our story: IIHS Status Report October 2014
Watch how Dean Sicking’s SAFER Barrier soft-wall technology protected Danica Patrick from suffering the same fate as Dale Earnhardt:
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