Less than a week ago, I woke up thinking, “I need to start a petition on the White House website asking President Obama to appoint a Traffic Safety Ombudsman.” The idea of such a position/role had come to me a month earlier, but nobody was responding to my request to appoint one.
Now it seemed like I needed to take action. Since the petition site indicated that if we got 100,000 signatures in 30 days, then they would respond to it, it seemed like good timing to start July 1–with July 31 as the target date.
The first step was getting the ball rolling and it has been torturous watching the number of signatures slowly creep up. Once it reaches 150, then the petition will become searchable on their website. Meanwhile. . .
Maybe we’ll get a boost from an article published today on treehugger.com by managing editor, Lloyd Alter. I had commented on his article last weekend on the Tesla crash and Tweeted a message to him.
Today he published an article about our crash story, our advocacy efforts, and our Traffic Safety Ombudsman Petition and Vision Zero goals. Perhaps this will give us a good jumpstart on the way to our 100,000 goal–and ultimately our goal of SAVING LIVES.
Aaron Kiefer has designed an innovative combination side/rear underride guard for large trucks. Recently, he tallied up the number of side underride crashes which his crash reconstruction firm has investigated.
This is what he found:
-39 passenger vehicle/commercial vehicle underride accidents in 2014, 2015, 2016 YTD (16 average annual cases*) *Approx 90% of cases were sampled
-26 side, 13 rear
-19 into dry van trailers, (13 side, 6 rear)
-10 into flatbed trailers
-10 into other trailer types/other commercial vehicles
“The driver of a Tesla Model S sedan using the vehicle’s self-driving mode has been killed in a collision with a truck, federal officials said Thursday, the first U.S. fatality using the new technology.
“The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said preliminary reports indicate the crash occurred when a tractor-trailer made a left turn in front of the Tesla at a highway intersection.”
The problem was that the car went under the side of a truck. Trucks are not required to have side guards. There was nothing for the car’s sensors to detect.
This Saturday morning found us helping out at Aaron Kiefer’s third crash test of his side guard prototype. We managed to complete two crash tests–both successful with no Passenger Compartment Intrusion (PCI). People in the car would probably have survived.
The first crash resulted in the car bouncing back with no part of the vehicle going under the truck. We concluded that the car being in neutral allowed it to be sent backward after the collision. If the car had been in gear, then it probably would not have done that. Because the hood was bent, we took off the broken front bumper to get the hood up in order to charge the battery on the car to prepare it for the second test.
The second crash still had no PCI but the side guard tore at two points–quite likely from sharp parts of the car where the bumper had been taken off. Because the guard tore, it allowed the car to go under the truck up to the point of the A-pillar–although still leaving the passenger compartment totally intact.
Another successful crash test day with promising results for future underride protection which can be manufactured for trailers and single unit trucks. Aaron envisions kits for retrofitting existing trucks, at around 200 pounds for maybe $1,000/truck.
The biggest failing of the day was my crash test video on the first crash; I held my camera at the wrong angle so you’ll have to tip your head to view it properly (audio also seemed to be muted at some points). Thankfully, my bloopers had no impact on the success of the underride prevention technology!
As I was contemplating whether to go next week to Ralph Nader’s Breaking Through Power: A Historic Civic Mobilization, I checked my email and saw that there was a new Public Comment posted on the Federal Register regarding the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Underride Guards.
I quickly went to the site and saw that the Truck Trailer Manufacturers Association had posted a comment (see their comments in the PDFs below). Apparently our Underride Roundtable two weeks ago at IIHS has spurred them to spell out the steps which have been taken over the years to squash side underride guards from being mandated and manufactured.
The rationale: Cost/Benefit Analysis shows that adding side guard protection from underride of trucks by passenger vehicles is not cost-effective.
“In its 1991 Preliminary Regulatory Evaluation of proposed guards for rear underride, NHTSA’s Plans and Policy Office of Regulatory Analysis stated: “Combination truck side underride counter-measures have been determined not to be cost-effective.” [Docket I-11; Notice 9; Comment 002, page 15 (emphasis added) {by TTMA}].”
Translate that: If this attitude and rulemaking policy is allowed to continue unabated, then innocent, unsuspecting travelers on our road will continue to experience preventable underride crashes and receive a Sentence of Death by Preventable Underride. And no one will be held responsible for that!!!
And, yes, TTMA is repeating the oft-heard industry argument that the solution is to concentrate on Crash Avoidance Technology instead–as if it were an either/or not a both/and question!
Meanwhile, people will continue to needlessly die — like AnnaLeah and Mary — and people like me will undergo tremendously traumatic grief multiplied exponentially by the anger and frustration of knowing that it might well have been prevented were it not for the endless opposition to implementing solutions which are readily available.
And, no, I cannot imagine that it would have to weigh the 750 pounds which they claim it will (which the NHTSA cost/benefit analysis is based upon, by the way). I helped roll up the side guard designed by Aaron Kiefer last month and it did not weigh that much. I just talked to Aaron and he estimates that his side guard, once in mass production, might weigh about 175 pounds. Currently, his prototype, when combining the weight of it on both sides of the truck, weighs in at 204 pounds.
And, by the way, look at this crash test of Aaron’s side guard, which I witnessed in North Carolina less than a month ago:
Somebody, please get me an audience with President Obama next week (now I have to go to that conference). I need him to tell me to my face that it is not a matter of life & death for him to adopt a National Vision Zero Goal, to establish a White House Vision Zero Task Force, and to sign a Vision Zero Executive Order which will pave the way for Vision Zero Rulemaking at DOT.
Of course, what I would really like to have happen is to speak with him, have him catch the vision and promise me that he will actually take those actions. Wouldn’t that be exciting!
However, if President Obama does not do so, TTMA has clearly shown us that nothing will be any different and any new underride rule issued will likely continue to be weak and ineffective. When it is Technologically Unnecessary for that to be so. And then who will be ethically responsible for the continued carnage on the highways of this great country?!
We just got home from helping with Aaron Kiefer’s latest side guard test. Watch it here:
Aaron will be taking this truck with his innovative side/rear guard to the Underride Roundtable at IIHS next week for everyone to see. Then he plans to leave it there in hopes that IIHS will do their own crash testing of his prototype.
Jerry and I were talking this morning. He had this question. . . even if an underride crash victim is at fault for the crash occurring, don’t they deserve a second chance at life? Do we really approve of an unnecessary/preventable death sentence for their mistake?
For the most part, from what I can see, victims of truck underride crashes, are the ones who bear the brunt of the problem. Even if some of them might be the cause of the crash occurring in the first place, do they not deserve a second chance to make up for their mistake?
Are we unwilling to pay to protect them from the second deadly collision which occurs due to inadequate or non-existent underride guards? Or is the Death by Underride Sentence — meted out to them by the regulators and manufacturers — acceptable to society?
Does a driver of a passenger vehicle get the punishment of a Death Sentence for rear-ending another passenger vehicle? Should they? Well, that’s basically what often happens when a car rear-ends a truck.
I just found out about a case, in 2000, where a Texas jury found “a trailer defective for not being equipped with side underride guards. Stated another way, a jury has now said manufacturers should equip trailers with something that the government does not require and the customer does not want.”
This article also states, “Between 1953 and 1998, when the current rear underride requirements were implemented, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) studied the issue multiple times. One of the questions that needed to be addressed was the potential benefit of such a device. In announcing that rear underride (but not side underride) would be required on trailers, NHTSA estimated that rear guards would save between nine and 19 lives per year (The Federal Register, Jan 24, 1996). How many lives would a side underride guard save annually? We don’t know, but accident research statistics indicate the incidence of side underride is substantially lower than rear impacts.”
The article also commented on the dilemma which the trailer manufacturers found themselves in:
“Trailer manufacturers take seriously their responsibility to put safe products on the roadways. But after this verdict, we wonder if they are feeling as trapped as a cardboard ballot on Election Day. Only time will tell if the industry is really stuck or if this case is just a dimpled chad.”
“In the absence of a federal regulation mandating side underride guards, trailer manufacturers are going to find it extremely difficult to produce a trailer that the Laredo jury would not consider defective.”
To sell a trailer equipped with side underride guards, a trailer salesperson would have to accomplish the following:
– Convince the customer the safety benefits would be worth perhaps an additional $1,000 cost per trailer and an increase in tare weight of between 800 and 1,000 pounds.
– Keep the customer from thinking in terms of how competitive trucking is today and that such a cost or weight penalty would put him at a competitive disadvantage.
– Prove that the height of the guard is just right – low enough to keep out cars and high enough to clear railroad crossings and other obstructions.
– Show that the guard is strong – but not too strong. NHTSA rear underride research in the 1970s concluded rear guards should absorb energy by being weak enough to yield – yet strong enough to stop the car. But we can’t simply apply the rear underride requirements to a side guard because crash dynamics of side underride are completely different from rear impacts. Should the guard be strong enough to withstand glancing blows as was the case in the Maravilla accident, or must it absorb the full impact of a broadside crash at a highway intersection? This is a key point since there are no objective standards, and juries have the right to second-guess engineers and federal regulators.[Note: See my posts on the topic of SIDE GUARDS–Side Guard Posts]
– Point out that maintenance of guards hung along the length of the trailer will be no problem.
– Demonstrate how the side underride guard can coexist with sliding tandems. Prove that it will not create a safety hazard by interfering with routine brake inspections and maintenance, tire replacement, or landing gear operation.
Did I read that right? Convince the customer the safety benefits would be worth perhaps an additional $1,000 cost per trailer. . . Here we go again, Profit takes Priority over Human Life.
Somehow I can’t seem to feel sorry for them because I know that their problems can be resolved. I hope that they will listen to what is discussed at the Underride Roundtable; it might just help them out of a hard spot. Win/Win.
Lead counsel Chip Ferguson stated, “The Jury in this case has sent a strong message by rendering the largest verdict ever in this type of case. They not only found that the Lufkin Industries’ trailer was defective but they also found that the United States government’s safety regulations were inadequate to protect the public from an unreasonable risk of injury and death. This verdict mandates that both industry and the government fix the problem, and make our roads safer.” Noting that trailer manufacturing is a multi-billion dollar industry, Ferguson added, “We have an industry that creates $10 billion every year in revenues. It is time for them to use those resources for something other than lobbying and politicking. It is time for them to pool those resources to make us safer.”
Co-counsel Chris Coco added, “Lufkin Industries and the entire trailer manufacturing industry knew about the dangers of side under-rides for decades. Rather than testing and developing solutions, they chose to ignore it, to do nothing. They used their influence to purchase de-regulation, all at the expense of victims like Kelleigh Falcon. Her life was ruined because of this. Her family was torn to shreds because of this. Lufkin Industries, the entire industry and our government all have her blood on their hands. It is time for them to clean up this mess.”
And here is a third case, which seems to support the legal obligation of trailer manufacturers to protect occupants of other vehicles which collide with them:
Background. Maribel Quilez-Bonelli (Quilez) was killed when the hood of her 2004 Jeep Liberty under-rode a dump truck that was stopped in the left lane of an expressway while municipal employees did maintenance work in the area. Quilez apparently realized at the last minute that the truck ahead of her was not moving and she swerved to avoid a collision. However, the driver’s side of her Jeep impacted the truck and the truck’s bumper penetrated the driver’s side roof and windshield of the Jeep, striking Quilez in the face and head. Relatives of Quilez filed a product liability action against Ox Bodies, Inc. and Truck Bodies & Equipment Int’l, Inc., the companies that designed and manufactured the dump body of the truck, claiming that the company failed to properly design or manufacturer the dump truck’s rear guard. The defendants moved for summary judgment or judgment on the pleadings, arguing that the crashworthiness doctrine did not apply in Puerto Rico and that Quilez’s negligent design claim was barred by Puerto Rico law.
The court then explained that Larsen has been interpreted to mean that manufacturers must be held to a reasonable duty of care in the design of their vehicles in accordance with the state of the art to minimize the effects of the foreseeable hazards of collisions and impacts. The court noted that rear-end collisions are common and the danger of under-ride accidents was well known to truck manufacturers and had been for decades.. . .The better rule, according to the court, and the one favored by the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability was to hold manufacturers to a reasonable duty of care in the design of rear bumpers so as to minimize the effects of accidents to those who collide with its vehicles.
Given that foreseeability is the “linchpin” for determining duty in a negligence claim and having determined as part of the crashworthiness analysis that accidents involving other vehicles were foreseeable, the court could not determine, as a matter of law, that Quilez’s negligent design claim was barred by Puerto Rico law.
If cases like these have had favorable outcomes for the plaintiffs, then why have they not made a noticeable impact on the regulation and manufacture of truck underride guards? That is what I would like to know.
March has historically been a momentous, memorable month for truck underride safety advocacy. Not that other months are totally devoid of such activity, but I have observed a noticeable pattern:
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has studied and reported on the truck underride problem for many years. After our underride crash on May 4, 2013, we discovered that they had published a report on this issue just a few months earlier on March 14, 2013, as well as a prior report on March 1, 2011.
On the 37th anniversary of our marriage, our family launched the AnnaLeah & Mary Stand Up for Truck Safety Petition on March 19, 2014, with one of the petition requests being to improve truck underride protection (rear, side, and front on tractor trailers, as well as for Single Unit Trucks).
Later that week, on March 23, 2014, I published a Youtube video to explain why we had launched the petition and what we were asking for–including an upgrade of the weak, ineffective federal underride standards.
During the almost three years which have passed since that terribly tragic day in May, we continue to uncover new (to us) information which surely should have led to improved underride protection long before now. For example, about a month ago, I became aware of a March 16, 1977 (when I was 21–just a few days from my wedding) Senate Investigative hearing, which was reported on in the March 29, 1977 IIHS Status Report.
This is how that report began: The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has released the results of a crash test program focused on the deadly problem of car-into-truck underride crashes. Appearing as lead-off witness at a March 16 Senate Investigative hearing, the Institute’s president, William Haddon, Jr., M.D., presented crash test films and analyses showing that: The 25 year-old federal “rear end protection” standard for devices on the backs of tractor-trailers and trucks is “a sham.”
Further, Haddon warned Senators, “Blood has been shed, heads literally have rolled and countless thousands of Americans have been injured because these agencies did not act. Further inaction would be inexcusable.”
On March 5, 2016, we delivered our second petition to Washington, DC, when we took our Vision Zero Petition Book with 20,000 signatures to the Department of Transportation and President Obama. We asked for a Vision Zero Executive Order to pave the way for Vision Zero Rulemaking policies so that a truly effective and comprehensive underride standard can be issued.
On March 10, 2016, the Vision Zero Petition Book and 20,000 signatures were posted as a Public Comment on the current rear underride rulemaking.
On March 12, 2016, Jerry and I were privileged to participate in a successful side guard crash test in Hillsborough, North Carolina. This innovative side/rear combination can be retrofit to existing trucks on the road. Imagine the potential for saving lives!
On March 2, 2016, just three days prior to our recent delivery of the Vision Zero Petition, I discovered a March 19, 1969, Federal Highway Administration underride rulemaking document on the Federal Register which indicated that their intent was to extend underride protection to the sides of large vehicles! Eight years before my wedding day, when I was 13 years-old, DOT was intending to call for stronger underride protection. And yet, 44 years later, when my daughter Mary was 13 and AnnaLeah was 17, we still had not gotten it right! That’s just wrong!
It is my fervent hope that, when March2017 rolls around, we will be celebrating a vastly improved federal standard–enthusiastically and immediately adopted by the trucking industry–for all-around-the-truck underride protection at higher speeds, including now-exempt single unit trucks as well as retrofitted to existing trucks and trailers.
If this seems like a costly venture, try comparing it to the price paid by thousands upon thousands of individuals and families during the past decades of ineffective underride protection–added to the countless precious people who will be saved in the years to come from tragic, preventable death by underride.
We have been following the progress of Aaron Kiefer’s development of an innovative side/rear underride guard, which he has designed on his own time when not working as a crash reconstructionist or spending time with his family. So we eagerly welcomed his invitation to help out in his MacGyver-style crash test this past Saturday. (By the way, I am a big fan of MacGyver–watched every episode on DVD with Mary & AnnaLeah.)
Aaron wanted to take this opportunity to test his design and find out what changes might be needed to make it a marketable and affordable option for trailer owners to install as a retrofit safety improvement. We joined a crew of his family, friends, and fellow crash reconstructionists at a junkyard in the Triangle area.
The morning was for set-up. Then we took a break for some brats and chips before devoting the afternoon to three crash tests. I had been unsure before arriving as to how a pick-up could tow a car and make it crash into a trailer. It became clear to me when I saw Aaron’s pulley contraption.
Test 1 was a side crash. The collision of the car into the side guard caused the innovative side guard to pop off its brace. But, as Aaron and Jerry said, the test was successful because the side guard stopped the car from going under the trailer beyond the windshield; it prevented Passenger Compartment Intrusion (PCI). People in the car could have walked away alive.
Test 2 was a second side guard crash with the same car. Again, the car did not go under past the windshield and there was no PCI. The guard would have protected the people in the car from death and/or severe injuries. This time the added aluminum brace at the rear sheared off. Aaron thinks that he will have to go back to the drawing board and make a stronger brace.
Test 3 was a rear crash test. This time the side guard got rolled up and set aside. The trailer was turned around and the test car set up to aim at the rear of the trailer. The original rear underride guard on the trailer had actually been damaged at some point in the past and only had four of its original eight bolts. (That was the condition the underride guard was in when Aaron purchased the trailer, which had sustained damage from collision with an overpass. The guard had clearly not been properly maintained.)
In this crash, the underride guard failed and the car rode under the trailer. There was PCI and, if there had been people in the car, they would not have escaped unharmed. The added brace on the outer edge did not hold up. In fact, it was still fastened on (come to think of it, as it took a lot of work to unfasten it from the trailer afterward), but the original underride guard popped entirely off and flew to the side — doing nothing to stop the car from going under the truck.
Aaron had actually aimed the car to hit the left outer edge of the trailer, which he had reinforced with some aluminum braces. (Note: The current federal standard, as well as the proposed improved rule, does not require this area of the trailer to be protected against underride.) Instead, the car hit the vertical bar of the guard; the entire original guard then popped off and the car went under the truck.
It’s back to the drawing board for Aaron to find a way to improve his design. It was definitely a great success in that it prevented deadly side underride. On top of that, the trailer was not damaged by the collision (except for a few little nicks). But the bracing needs to be made stronger.
From what I could see, the day’s events only served to strengthen Aaron’s resolve to put a stop to senseless deaths, which he sees all-too-often in his work. I for one am truly thankful for the wonderful work he is doing, along with the group of people who willingly set aside a Saturday to support his effort.
The day gave me a deeper appreciation for all who take the time to solve the problem of preventable traffic fatalities. This includes the Virginia Tech Senior Design Team and Wabash and Manac and many researchers for decades, such as George Rechnitzer and Raphael Grzebieta in Australia and Luís Otto Faber Schmutzler in Brazil, and countless other un-named individuals.
It was also personally very intense. As one participant commented, “That was violent!”
Indeed, it was very violent. All three crashes gave me a jolt. But after the third crash, which resulted in deadly underride, I found myself standing still in the aftermath. Others were busy finding tasks to measure the results and get the clean-up started–including getting the car unstuck from under the trailer. But all I could do was stand there and stare.
Not until the next day really did it all begin to sink in: how I had witnessed from observing from afar what I and my children had gone through ourselves (although with a different crash scenario). I had watched, as an onlooker, the instantaneous destruction of a vehicle and how it was that AnnaLeah’s life had been inconceivably snuffed out in the twinkling of an eye and how, in a matter of mere seconds, Mary’s body had been broken beyond repair by just such a tragically-unresolved traffic safety problem.
It seemed like my own body experienced whiplash as it tensed up and relived, through traumatic muscle memory, what I had gone through. Meanwhile my heart continues to break with the grief that knows no end even as I process this experience.
It is beyond my comprehension how we, in this country, can allow such things to occur year after year without moving heaven and earth to learn how to prevent these tragedies. I can only ask forgiveness, and apologize to the countless families who have lost loved ones through violent death by motor vehicle, for letting them down–for not addressing it as the priority it should be. As a society, we have dropped the ball.
Jerry said several times, “It’s not every day you get to see a dream become a reality–kind of a humbling experience actually.” May there be many more such days.
