On Saturday, June 2, 2018, Aaron Kiefer’s volunteer crew of crash testers, conducted another round of crash testing with his TrailerGuard System consisting of a polyester webbing Safety Skirt connected to his aluminum Rear Reinforcement Attachment (which strengthens the existing rear underride guard).
Crash Test #1 showed some Passenger Compartment Intrusion (PCI), which means the people in the car would have been injured. Analysis of the results showed that the webbing was likely too low and not able to catch the car.
Crash Test #2, on the other hand, was very successful: no PCI. The car was damaged from the collision but did not go under the trailer and rebounded back. 35 mph Delta-V force, 31 mph impact speed
Aerial view from a drone:
Q. What does it mean that the air bags did not deploy?
A. The acceleration was low enough that the car decided that it didn’t need them. So the crash pulse was “long” due to the flexibility/energy absorbing of the webbing. According to the air bag control module report, the car deployed the driver seat and passenger seat belt pretensioners. However, the severity of the crash was judged below the threshold to require the frontal air bags. This is due to the fact that the deceleration was achieved over a long duration (over 200 ms) and that the decleration rate was low.
Q. So, how would occupants have fared?
A. The occupants would have been fine in this 30+ mph collision since PCI was avoided and the energy was absorbed by the webbing and the vehicle structure. the threshold for air bag deployment of a vehicle of this type striking a solid object is 10-15 mph.
Crash testing — especially without the backing of corporate R&D resources — is time-consuming but well worth the effort. Imagine where we would be in terms of preventing devastating truck underride if we all collaborated to get the job done!
Aaron Kiefer, a crash reconstructionist, has been working for almost three years now to design and crash test a TrailerGuard System to prevent cars from sliding under trucks. The project is currently at a stage where he needs to move beyond a simple prototype to begin manufacture of a product which can be installed on a set of trucks to demonstrate its practicality.
In 2015, Aaron reached out to the Karth family, who lost two daughters, AnnaLeah (17) and Mary (13), due to a truck underride crash. They had set up a non-profit organization — AnnaLeah & Mary For Truck Safety — for the purpose of encouraging underride research. Since that time, Jerry and Marianne Karth, have been working alongside Aaron to support his crash testing efforts. The ALMFTS website, fortrucksafety.com, serves as a means for other families and organizations to support this project by making donations which may be considered tax-deductible.
The Karths have offered to keep a record here of the names of those whose lives are being remembered by their loved ones through contributions to this life-saving project. Photos and memories can be included. Their stories can also be included in the Interactive Underride Crash Map.
If you would like to know more about this, or would like to contact us about joining in to support our efforts, please email us at marianne@annaleahmary.com. Hope to hear from you soon!
Aaron Kiefer, a crash reconstructionist, has been working for almost three years now to design and crash test a TrailerGuard System to prevent cars from sliding under trucks. The project is currently at a stage where he needs to move beyond a simple prototype to begin manufacture of a product which can be installed on a set of trucks to demonstrate its practicality.
In 2015, Aaron reached out to the Karth family, who lost two daughters, AnnaLeah (17) and Mary (13), due to a truck underride crash. They had set up a non-profit organization — AnnaLeah & Mary For Truck Safety — for the purpose of encouraging underride research. Since that time, Jerry and Marianne Karth, have been working alongside Aaron to support his crash testing efforts. The ALMFTS website, fortrucksafety.com, serves as a means for other families and organizations to support this project by making donations which may be considered tax-deductible.
The Karths have offered to keep a record here of the names of those whose lives are being remembered by their loved ones through contributions to this life-saving project. Photos and memories can be included. Their stories can also be included in the Interactive Underride Crash Map.
This man survived a truck crash in March 2017 because the trailer which he rear-ended had a strengthened rear underride guard. It is our hope that many others will survive truck crashes because of Aaron’s innovative underride prevention technology.
If you would like to know more about this, or would like to contact us about joining in to support our efforts, please email us at marianne@annaleahmary.com. Hope to hear from you soon!
A panel of experts discuss underride at a Briefing on The Hill, October 12, 2017, to bring greater understanding of the problem and solutions of deadly but preventable truck underride. Robert Lane, VP of Product Engineering at Wabash National — a trailer manufacturer, discusses their commitment to development of underride protective devices for the prevention of underride deaths and debilitating injuries.
Successful side guard crash test at 33-34 mph — one year after we helped Aaron Kiefer with his first one. No Passenger Compartment Intrusion (PCI). If this had been a real-life crash, the people in the car would not have experienced deadly, severe underride of the side of the truck.
Lengthier video shows the construction of the side guard, as well as the prep work and aftermath clean-up by Aaron’s volunteer crew:
Thank you, Aaron, for your confidence that this is a solvable problem — and your commitment to follow this project through to its life-saving goal.
NBC News received a letter from the Truck Trailer Manufacturers Association about the Today Show investigative report on Side Underride. After further investigation, NBC News added this to their article on the report:
Update and correction: After the publication of our story, we received a letter from the Truck Trailer Manufacturers Association (TTMA), which argues that our report overstated the simplicity of the side guard fix and that prototypes have been technical and commercial failures. TTMA made the same argument to NHTSA in a letter we referenced in our report, which you can read here. They also told us that TTMA has not made any political donations to lawmakers on the issue of side underrides, including to Senator Thune. In response to other points made by TTMA, we have updated our online report with TTMA’s response that guards in Europe are focused on protecting bicyclists and pedestrians, not automobiles and that NTSB said injuries and deaths “could” be reduced by side guards, instead of “would.” We also have updated campaign finance data, broken out donations from the trucking sector of the transportation industry, and corrected the period during which those donations were made.
I previously wrote about the TTMA’s May 13, 2016 letter to NHTSA about side guards. Read it here.
Despite the TTMA’s objections to the report, the fact remains that almost as many people die from side underride crashes each year as from rear underride crashes. And, furthermore, I have seen with my own eyes the difference that side guards can make in stopping deadly underride.
Will we let the technical and commercial failures of side guard prototypes in the past stop us from keeping at the task of solving this problem? I thank God for people like Aaron Kiefer and Perry Ponder who have kept at it until they successfully proved what human ingenuity could do to save lives.
Note: In fact, Europe’s side guard standards are designed to protect pedestrians and cyclists — which the U.S. should do, too! But Europe does not require the prevention of cars from underriding trucks. I have been in communication with a global automotive regulation specialist, and I hope that what happens here in the U.S. will have a ripple effect globally.
Could a crash test between a Tesla car and a trailer with a side guard turn out differently than Joshua Brown’s tragic crash with his Tesla into and under the side of a trailer without a side guard?
Would Elon Musk be willing to partner with us to discover the answer?
Could a crash test* between a Tesla & a side guard silence the skeptics?
* Multiple crash test scenarios could be utilized to compare with and without side guard, with Tesla and with a Malibu (or similar model), with Airflow Deflector/Perry Ponder’s AngelWing and with Aaron Kiefer’s TrailerGuard System.
Partner with us to bring about a crash test of Aaron Kiefer’s life-saving truck side guard on January 20, 2017. We have thought of a way that you could participate in the production & testing of his latest professional-grade prototype.
We want to know if you would like to receive a specially-designed T-shirt — with Mary & AnnaLeah in mind — for a donation to this UNDERRIDE RESEARCH PROJECT/Crash Test:
You would receive a shirt like this for a minimum $20 donation:
IJK Interactive
You would receive a shirt like this for a minimum $25 donation:
IJK Interactive
We are trying to figure out if we should move ahead with this T-shirt project. Another upcoming T-shirt design will be Christopher. Please let us know if you might like to have one of these shirts to support our underride research efforts in memory of AnnaLeah & Mary.
HOW WE CAME UP WITH THE Christopher & Bono LOGOS:
Aaron Kiefer is making great progress on the development of his innovative side/rear guard for large trucks. Recently, he asked me if I would like to create a logo for the rear aluminum attachment piece of it which will attach to existing rear underride guards — thus strengthening them to better be able to prevent rear underride — and to which the side guard portion attaches.
So I sat down with my family to brainstorm ideas for a logo. A couple of years ago, we had done the same thing to come up with a name and logo for our non-profit organization:
design by Isaac Karth, IJK Interactive
Aaron already calls his invention — which uniquely provides continuous protection around the side and rear of trailers — the TrailerGuard System.
In our brainstorming, we decided that we could call the side portion of his life-saving invention the Christopher Guard for the patron saint/advocate of travelers — keeping in mind AnnaLeah’s dragon and calling it Christopher, who would guard against sure death (my idea).
And we could call the rear attachment portion — which is designed to attach to the existing rear guard (making it more likely to prevent the guillotine effect of truck underride) — the Bono Guard for the patron saint, Beuno or Bono (Latin, bonus = good), known for the protection of children — using the image of Mary’s St. Bernard Gertie (my idea).
Aaron’s invention:
See a crash test of Aaron’s original version of his TrailerSafe System in the Spring of 2016:
