“FRONTLINE and ProPublica investigate deadly truck accidents and the fight over measures that could save thousands of lives. As deaths rise, the documentary examines decades of legal maneuvering, political influence, lax regulation and industry opposition.”
Coming June 13, 10:00 p.m./9 CT.
Watch the trailer here: America’s Dangerous Trucks
Now, I’m only a Cubs fan by marriage. Early on in that marriage, I learned what a die-hard fan is and joined the club. But I’m not as familiar with historical details as my husband. Like, what’s with the 1969 Cubs?
However, I have become acquainted with truck underride history and know that, in 1969, our U.S. Department of Transportation was working on rear underride guard rulemaking — though it never became law until 1996 — and said that they intended to add side underride protection on trucks. Never happened.
After losing AnnaLeah and Mary in 2013 due to rear underride, I was, of course, very interested in the updated rear underride guard rule in July 2022. In fact, I was quite disturbed to learn that NHTSA blew an opportunity to require a level of underride protection proven possible by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and nine trailer manufacturers, who were given the TOUGHGUARD award — further evidenced as technically feasible by the survivor of a 2017 rear end truck crash.
Imagine my further consternation when I learned that at least part of the basis for that July 2022 Rear Impact Guard Rule was a NHTSA “engineering judgement concern” for “potential rotation outboard.” What that means is that if the rear guard were stronger at the outer edges of the tractor trailer, that is strong enough to prevent underride, then the car upon collision might rotate or spin out into traffic and collide with another vehicle causing a secondary collision — what the industry dubs “unintended consequences.”
Ha! The reality is that a secondary crash such as that would be so much more likely to allow the crashworthiness features (crumple zone, airbags, seat belt tensioners) of the involved vehicles to protect the occupants as intended. Was that really their rationale? Allow people to die under a trailer so that some other fender bender, i.e., non life threatening crash, wouldn’t occur?
I asked an engineer at a university to weigh in on this concern during a February 24, 2023, Friday brown bag lunch TEAM Underride Zoom discussion. Here are the rather garbled notes I jotted down: . . . fear that it would go out into the traffic; misplaced fear; projecting less inertia as it is deflected out from hitting truck — missing the fact that there is no catching equipment on a trailer — energy absorption — the trailer does not catch the car. If it collides at the rear corner, With or without guard it will rotate. The reason rotation takes place. . . because it is the 30% offset. Unintended Consequences.
I asked him to write up his thoughts for me to share and Jared Bryson, Smart Road Operations and Mechanical Systems Innovation Director at Virginia Tech, graciously and creatively obliged.
I’d say that well-thought out explanation should be taken into consideration during a careful review of the July 15, 2022 rear underride guard rule and the questionable (my words) NHTSA decision to decline from requiring life-preserving underride protection at the outer edges of the guard. It’s guaranteed to mean the difference between life & death for more than one person in the days ahead.
Why are we working so hard to get weak rear underride guards replaced?
Troopers say 75-year-old Richard Leth, of Hartley, was driving a GMC Sierra pickup truck north on Highway 4. . .
Leth’s truck crossed the centerline and collided with the tractor-trailer, troopers reported. Iowan dies in crash with tractor-trailer
Because the bottom of a truck is higher than the bumper of passenger vehicles, when there is a collision the smaller vehicle easily slides under the truck and the first point of impact is the windshield. Seatbelts, airbags, and car crumple zones do not function as intended in underride crashes —front, side, and rear — leaving passenger vehicle occupants vulnerable to life-threatening injuries.
See Underride Crash Memorials posted here and at #STOPunderrides Tweets. To add photos or more information on this story or to add other underride crashes to be remembered, send an email to underridemap@gmail.com. Please use this Interactive Underride Crash Map Crash Location Input Form to provide us with accurate information . (Note: the map is currently not online; but we would keep the information for future updating and to aid in underride advocacy efforts.)
Support improving Underride Protection on trailers: Contact your legislators with this User-Friendly TAKE ACTION online tool.
Please sign this petition: Congress, Act Now To End Deadly Truck Underrides.
Note: In order to raise awareness and preserve the memories of underride victims — precious ones gone too soon — I have been writing memorial posts on what could potentially be underride crashes. I am not a crash reconstructionist, and I do not have all the facts on these crashes; but underride should be investigated as a potential factor in truck crash injuries and deaths.
We are asking that people send us crash reports for collisions with trucks which they suspect involved underride. Send them to marianne@annaleahmary.com. We will submit these as complaints to USDOT. Read more here: Launching a Campaign To Flood NHTSA With Underride Complaint Reports
We are thankful for The Law Firm for Truck Safety, who graciously offered to match all donations up to $25,000 for the STOP Underrides Crash Test Tour. We welcome contributions of any size and wish to recognize all of our Business Partners and TEAM Underride Partners here.
Note: This is a work in progress; partners will be added as they join — although I might fall behind in getting them recorded! If you don’t see your name, or don’t receive a receipt, please let me know at marianne@annaleahmary.com.
How You Can Help TEAM Underride:
Business Partners
Learn about the companies that have donated expertise, facilities, financial support, and materials to this project for the saving of many lives.
Academy of Truck Accident Attorneys 
Maverick MetalWorks AngelWingSkirts.com TrailerGuards.com
Institute for Safer Trucking StopUnderrides.org Swenson & Shelley, PLLC
TEAM Underride Partners
Lois Durso-Hawkins and Mark Hawkins
In Loving Memory of Roya Sadigh
Aaron Kiefer
Trista Jean
Peggy Kiefer
Anthony Mastriano
Daniel Michel
Reshard Alexander
AnnaLeah & Mary for Truck Safety (ALMFTS) is collaborating with State Highway Patrols & safety groups to demonstrate engineering solutions at 2-day Underride Crash Test Events in at least 4 regions of the U.S.
Each Regional Event will include multiple crash tests — including one with & one without a side guard — as well as a keynote speaker & panel discussion to educate first responders, crash investigators, insurers, regulators, & the trucking industry on the deadly underride problem and solutions.
Organizers:
The STOP Underrides Crash Test Tour is a collaborative TEAM Underride effort of ALMFTS, StopUnderrides.org, TrailerGuards.com, AngelWingSkirts.com, Institute for Safer Trucking, The Law Firm for Truck Safety, and many other organizations and individuals, including families of underride victims. Go, Team, Go!
Crash Test Tour Event Sites:
As plans develop, information will be provided here on the schedule and locations where Crash Test Events will take place during 2023. Potential sites under consideration include Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, South Carolina, Indiana, New York, and New Mexico. Subject to change.
Donors:
We are thankful for The Law Firm for Truck Safety, who graciously offered to match all donations up to $25,000. They were later joined by the Academy of Trucking Accident Attorneys (ATAA), who have added another $25,000 to our matching challenge. We welcome contributions of any size and wish to recognize all of our Business Partners and TEAM Underride Partners here.
How You Can Help TEAM Underride:
STOP Underrides Crash Test Tour – Demonstrating Solutions:
Many Underride Stories – Tip of the Iceberg – Precious Loved Ones, Gone Too Soon:
One Underride Story:
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration states that their mission is to save lives, prevent injuries, and reduce economic costs due to road traffic crashes, through education, research, safety standards, and enforcement. They seem to do a decent job of informing the public with a webpage on driver assistance technologies. However, the NHTSA Truck Underride Page only contains a very short list of studies. This is the extent of entries on that page:
For a century-old problem, there is actually a wealth of research, reports, and recommendations available. As a national traffic safety leader, NHTSA could be a source of all things underride. In fact, by posting a broader set of underride specific information, NHTSA could make use of their website to better inform and inspire all stakeholders at the same time without fear of unfairly communicating with one stakeholder. This would fulfill the first purpose of the Administrative Procedures Act which “requires agencies to keep the public informed and up-to-date on agency activities.”
On September 2, “TEAM Underride” met via Zoom to discuss how we could aid NHTSA in that mission by making recommendations for additions to the NHTSA Truck Underride Page. In an attempt to be helpful, TEAM Underride participants briefly brainstormed ideas for what we thought would be useful to add to the NHTSA Truck Underride webpage, including:
Link to the underride rulemaking, including Final Rear Impact Guard Rule — Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards; Rear Impact Guards, Rear Impact Protection
Federal Register announcements for the Advisory Committee on Underride Protection (ACUP)
Link to VOLPE side guard resources, including Pedestrian-Bike Side Guards for Trucks: How They Work
Link to FMCSA study on pedestrians and side guards – Study of Truck Side Guards to Reduce Pedestrian Fatalities
GAO Truck Underride Report and status of recommendations
Links to additional underride research, including research conducted under contracts with the USDOT
Link to IIHS underride research, e.g.,
International underride regulations, e.g., Front Underride Protection, wp29regs, ECE93
That would be a good start. And we’re more than willing to help in whatever way we can to get this resource development underway.
In July 2022, eight years after our original petition was delivered to the Department of Transportation, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), whose mission it is to save lives, prevent injuries, and reduce economic costs due to road traffic crashes, through education, research, safety standards, and enforcement, took the following actions related to underride protection:
In this crash test video, the top test shows what IIHS has proven possible, the bottom test shows what the 2022 rule will require:
By refusing to revise the December 2015 NPRM to the TOUGHGuard proven level of strength, NHTSA has demonstrated an unwillingness to require that all manufacturers install these stronger guards as Standard on new trailers. To state the obvious, the result is that manufacturers may continue to offer these guards as an Option, thereby allowing the ongoing production of trailers — into the future — with guards having a known unreasonable risk of Death By Underride. How do they sleep at night knowing that their meaningless rhetoric and regulatory malpractice means many more innocent people will needlessly die?
This is nothing less than a reckless disregard for human life.
Why are we working so hard to get weak rear underride guards replaced?
When it comes to underride, as far as I can tell, there are at least four groups of people:
What group are you in? Are you comfortable with where you’re at?
The fact that truck and trailer designs can potentially allow underride when there are collisions with passenger vehicles has a long history of being misunderstood. With that in mind, we recently sent letters to two lists of “100 top carriers” in North America via Certified Mail.
We wanted to make sure that their Boards and CEOs received information about the availability of engineering solutions which can modify those designs in order to prevent deadly underride and passenger compartment intrusion.
Here’s our mailing list of the 200 companies:
Mailing List for 2020 Top 200 Carriers
Here’s the Carrier Letter Template:
CARRIER LETTERS Please Stop Preventable Underride Injury and Death
Here are Instructions for Searching Certified Mail Project Folders to retrieve the 200 Letters, Certified Mail Receipts, and Delivery Receipts. You will also find instructions there for retrieving additional letters to trucking companies and trailer manufacturers which were mailed in 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2024.
Here’s a post from our 2024 project: Certified Letters Alert Carriers of Underride Dangers, Liability & Solutions.
A recent article from Transport Topics caught my eye. It’s all about this & that concerning side skirts on trailers (for fuel savings). Lots for a trailer buyer to consider when making a decision.
Installing the complete system takes 2.5 man-hours, he said.
Wikipedia has to say this about cost: As of 2009, a set of trailer skirts cost between C$1500 and C$3000 (US$1300 to $2700). Standard trailer skirts have an estimated payback period of ten to eighteen months, while “advanced” skirts (those that improve fuel efficiency by over 7%) are estimated to pay for themselves in seven to fourteen months.
Seriously?! An AngelWing side guard can be installed in close to that amount of time. And if side guards were socially acceptable and widely embraced so that they readily available to purchase (you know how supply and demand works, right?), the price could quite likely be comparable. Plus side guards may enhance fuel savings when used with side skirts.
So why the fuss from the industry about the cost of LIFE-SAVING side guards!?
Read the whole article for yourself and tell me why there is such resistance to installing comprehensive and effective underride protection and outright opposition toward a mandate which would require it.
