After seeing the latest segment of the WUSA9 Underride Investigative Series by Eric Flack, Teresa Woodard at WFAA in Dallas interviewed Rebekah Karth Chojnacki on January 22, 2020. Here’s the result of that interview:
Well said!
WUSA9 Underride Investigative Series, January 21, 2020 segment, Truckers say they’re open to strengthening underride standards – with a catch:
On October 26, 2019, we set up a STOP Underrides! Booth at the North Carolina State Fair as part of the Governor’s Highway Safety Program Safety City. Over 90% of the people, who learned from us about the underride problem, decided to sign a paper copy of the STOP Underrides! Petition. Those 270 people are asking Congress to pass legislation which would end these preventable tragedies.
This chart assumes that our observation of overwhelming support from 90% of the fairgoers could be extrapolated to the population of the United States. It provides an estimate of how many people would want action taken to prevent underride if they knew the facts. I calculated the number of projected signers for each state (look for yours) and then added up the total for the entire United States: 277,930,023!
State Petition Signers Estimates By Population
Next week, we’ll be delivering over 8,000 paper petitions (printed from signatures garnered online) to four Congressional Offices in Washington, D.C. (and letting other offices take a peek).
Do you think that they’ll take note of this message from their constituents? Will they do anything as a result? Maybe not, but I’m going to make sure that I do what I can to disturb their sleep.
Actually, I outlived a crash with two big trucks. My daughters did not. The difference? The truck came into their part of the car — not mine. It’s called Passenger Compartment Intrusion (PCI). And that is what Underride Protection can prevent. To save lives.
Note: some, but not all, new trailers being manufactured today have the stronger rear underride guard seen in this 2017 crash test. And most of the existing millions of trailers on the road have the weaker, ineffective rear guards.
Only a handful of trailers on U.S. roads have side guards to stop cars like this video shows is possible. That is why the STOP Underrides! Bill is so vitally important.
44,000+ STOP Underrides! Petition Signatures Posted on the Federal Register (May 2018)
