The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, for example, can impose a maximum penalty of $35 million on an automaker that flouts safety regulations — a relatively low sum for a company like General Motors, which last year paid such a fine for a defect that has now been linked to at least 124 deaths.
By contrast, under the Clean Air Act, Volkswagen, the world’s largest automaker, could be fined as much as $37,500 for each recalled vehicle, for a possible total penalty of as much as $18 billion.
“The Clean Air Act statutory scheme gives E.P.A. more power and flexibility to move more quickly than N.H.T.S.A.,” said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, who has studied the government’s response to auto safety issues. “E.P.A. also seems more tough-minded and savvy about how to be effective in this arena.” . . .
And why do we let this go on and on and on? Why does corporate profit always win out over human life? Can we blame it on ignorance–theirs or ours?
Michael Moore’s answer: . . the cause of this tragedy is an economic system that places profit above everything else, including—and especially—human life. GM has a legal and fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders to make the biggest profits that it can. And if their top people crunch the numbers and can show that they will save more money by NOT fixing or replacing the part, then that is what they are going to . . . well do. http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/09/17/justice-department-lets-giant-corporation-evade-prosecution-deaths-over-100-people
Maybe it’s time for a change. Maybe we need to recognize that companies and individuals who make decisions and take actions which lead to unnecessary deaths on our roads should be held accountable for their criminal negligence. Maybe we should use the word manslaughter (look it up). At the very least, they should get more than a slap on the wrist. It appears that merely appealing to their conscience is not going to do the trick.
The question is, Will we rise up and demand change? Wake up, America. It could be you or your loved one that ends up dead on the road because somebody else was allowed to get away with murder*.
[Note: You might want to inform yourself on the topics of “second collisions” and Vision Zero because, although improving driver behavior is essential, we shouldn’t pretend that it is the only thing that needs to change when we look for how to end crash deaths. http://tinyurl.com/pmtw66hhttp://tinyurl.com/qdt7mog]
If I could be a Time Traveler, could I go back — say ten years or so — and push for Vision Zero policies, principles, and projects, and then maybe AnnaLeah and Mary would still be with us today?
Sign & Share the Vision Zero Petition to make a difference. Who knows, you could be saving someone’s life ten years from now: http://tinyurl.com/nhb88cq .
Also, see how we are applying Vision Zero principles to stop unnecessary truck underride deaths: http://tinyurl.com/ofbe5kg .
Charles lists the 5 most common lines he has heard, including:
“YOU DON’T HAVE A VALID OPINION IF YOU’RE NOT A LICENSED ENGINEER.”
“THERE ISN’T ENOUGH MONEY TO DO WHAT SHOULD BE DONE.”
“WE CAN’T ELIMINATE ALL RISKS. ‘. . .With the odd exception, the public does not have an expectation that all risks can be eliminated. There is an odd incoherence, however. . .'”
“IT IS THE POLITICIANS THAT ARE TO BLAME. ENGINEERS JUST FOLLOW ORDERS.”
“THIS REALLY IS A MATTER FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT, NOT ENGINEERING.”
In fact, I am looking forward to working with professionals, industry representatives, safety advocates, government officials, and victims as a team next May at our Underride Roundtableto solve the underride problemtogether and aim for Vision Zero Crash Deaths one life at a time. I am ready to deflect all arguments that it cannot be done. The Best Possible Protection.
In the aftermath of our crash, we have found ourselves walking a path we had not anticipated–safety advocacy. We have discovered the importance of raising awareness and gaining support in order to bring about life-saving changes.
After all, we had no idea about what truck underride guards were before May 4, 2013. How could we expect anyone else to know about them and understand what we were talking about unless we found every way imaginable to inform and motivate them to care about this issue–thankfully, never as much as we do.
So what I would like to talk about here is what you can do about it once you (the reader) better understand the ideas and importance behind our quest for Vision Zero, underride guards, and crash avoidance technology.
Specifically, what you can do is:
Become informed about what we are talking about so incessantly.
Sign our Vision Zero Petition. (Never doubt the power of 1.)
Share our Vision Zero Petition through talking to people about it, emailing, using whatever social media with which you are comfortable. (There are Sharing icons on The Petition Site.)
Read our new website, AnnaLeah & Mary for Truck Safety, which is dedicated to informing about underride guards and raising money for underride research and an Underride Roundtable to bring about the best underride protection by bringing together engineers, industry representatives, government officials, safety advocates, insurance companies, victims & their families, and the media. https://www.fortrucksafety.com/ and https://annaleahmary.com/underride-guards/
Donate to the research. (Every $1 counts.)
Share the website with others.
Share both of these projects with your local media.
When possible, look up your local media and make direct contact with them through a phone call, email, or through an online Contact Form.
This site has a lot of tools for reaching local media, including a map of the U.S. which allows you to click on your state and then your city and find local media. http://sparkaction.org/act/media
Be sure to let them know how important this is to you and your community as well.
Consider making a follow-up phone call.
For whatever you are able to do, thank you! And I’d love to hear about it.
We have made numerous contacts with the media as our story has been shared. But we cannot be in your community. Next week there will be an article in our local Rocky Mount newspaper. I will share the link for that with you and you can pass that along to your local media as well. We are asking you to be an extension of our national plea for the best possible protection.
This is not just some freak problem that will never affect you or someone you love. In fact, a Vision Zero policy in DOT rulemaking could make a big impact in not just truck safety but auto safety as well. Decisions about safety should not be led by profit. Cost/benefit analysis can never adequately measure the value of human life and health.
And, once we establish that our Vision is to reduce crash deaths one life at a time, then we can better hold corporate and government officials accountable. No longer will they be able to sweep unpleasant information about the results of defects and flaws under the rug. No longer can they justify decisions and actions which lead to unnecessary tragedy and/or deny that human life was the cost that was paid.
Our family had a paper route for 13 yrs.–afternoons during the week & mornings on the weekend. All 9 kids were involved. We know all about getting out the news–rain or shine, hail or white-out!
Tomorrow, our local paper in NC will be publishing an article about AnnaLeah & Mary for Truck Safety & our Vision Zero Petition. Please share the news with your local media so that people in your community can become aware & help our effort. Stay tuned for details; we will post the link.
Note: The article in the Rocky Mount Telegram will actually be delayed until next week due to the storm. Here are some previous articles on our story by Brie Handgraaf.
When you sign the petition, Care2 doesn’t indicate online what # you were–like they did with our AnnaLeah & Mary Stand Up For Truck Safety Petition in 2014. So I don’t know what number I was. But I waited until this morning to sign so that I could think about what I wanted to write in the COMMENTS section as I signed the petition.
This is what I wrote: There is no one that this does not potentially impact in some way. We are asking for bold and decisive action to reduce tragic, preventable crash fatalities. Don’t wait until it touches you personally to move heaven & earth to identify and require the best possible protection. Once a loved one becomes a motor vehicle crash statistic, it will be too late–they will not come back to you.
Can a petition really change rulemaking policy & reduce crash deaths? There is only one way to find out. . .
Please join the 847+ (and steadily rising) people who have signed our petition thus far to let the authorities know that we want to shake things up; we want to see an end to unnecessary tragedies.
The Public Comments period has closed for the Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for Underride Protection on Single Unit Trucks. But there were 21 last-minute comments which have now been added to the Federal Register today.
I have spoken and corresponded with George Rechnitzer and Raphael Grzebieta from the Transport and Road Safety (TARS) Research Centre in Sydney. I have also written about their work on underride protection in Australia.
Yesterday, I received from them a copy of their submission to the Public Comments on the Underride Protection of Single Unit Trucks. It is worth a read to find out what is being said in other countries about this vital issue.
Whilst there are force based design rules, e.g. in USA, Canada and Europe, it is apparent that these rules are inadequate. In our submission we strongly recommend crash test based performance requirements for under-run protection catering for both centred and off-set impact. Around 10 people per year on average are killed in Australia in rear under-run crashes resulting in horrific injuries such as decapitation.13 Yet the Regulation Impact Statement (RIS)14 for Underrun Protection publish by the Vehicle Safety Standards Branch at the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government in July 2009 recommended that only front under-run protection be applied to all rigid and articulated trucks. Their conclusion was that the cost-benefit ratio for frontal under-run barriers was greater than one whereas for side and rear under-run the benefit was negative, and hence such protection should not be mandated in an Australian Design Rule. Yet despite these numerous calls for changes over the past three decades, we continue to consistently kill people in such crashes, ignoring the fact that practical low cost effective under-run barriers can be fitted. That is the real unforgivable tragedy.
The Vison Zero and Safe System approach adopted by most of the world now and on which Towards Zero Deaths is anchored, boldly moves away from the economic- rationalist ‘cost-benefit’ models (cited in this Docket as still being used by NHTSA), to a humanistic more rational model. The important aspect of a ‘Vision Zero’ principle is that it introduces ‘ethical rules’ to guide the system designers. In other words: • Life and health can never be exchanged for other benefits within the society • Whenever someone is killed or seriously injured, necessary steps must be taken to avoid similar events.
The Authors of this submission would further point out to those at NHTSA considering how the Rear Impact Protection for Single Unit Trucks should be revised; they should consider placing themselves in the position of the gentleman being asked in the following Australian Government advertisement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsyvrkEjoXI&feature=youtu.be. This advertisement was commissioned and paid for by the Victorian State Government in Australia. We would ask the NHTSA staff responsible for this NPRM which members of their family would they allocate to die that would be acceptable to them and would meet the NHTSA cost benefit ratios being considered?
To break the impasse between safety stakeholders and regulators, the Authors of this submission have proposed to incorporate into the revision of the ASNZS3845.2 Australian Road Safety Barrier Systems and Devices a crash test performance requirement for rear under-run barriers for heavy trucks, shortly to be released for public comment. In that standard test requirements for under-ride barriers, called Truck Under-run Barriers (TUBs), has been developed and now included. We hope that this standard will be approved by committee members (members include Australian State Government regulators) and hopefully will be published in early 2016. The tests requirements are in part based on the US Manual for Assessing Road Hardware (MASH) and are presented below. We would strongly recommend that NHTSA consider such dynamic performance tests when they deliberate their development of the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard for under-ride barriers.
TUB’s are designed to prevent a vehicle impacting the rear of a stationary truck under-riding the back of the truck in a manner where the truck structure intrudes into the impacting vehicle’s occupant compartment. The TUB’s main function is to protect the occupants in the impacting vehicle.
If the car is designed to such ANCAP and IIHS test protocols with the maximum crashworthiness rating, it is likely that the occupants would not sustain serious injuries in a vehicle impacting such a TUB in the configurations shown in Figure 1.
The manufacturers of such TUBs and operators of heavy vehicles are encouraged to explore the application of energy absorbing systems for TUBs including rear air bags mounted on the rear of trucks.
This latter recommendation is relevant to our goal of seeking research money to provide to Dean Sicking whose proposal intends to do just that: explore the application of the SAFER Barrier — an energy absorbying system — to the prevention of truck underride tragedies.
As soon as their Public Comment is published, I will post a link so that you can read the entire document online for a better understanding of their detailed analysis and proposal for crash test based performance requirements for truck underride protection, for both centred and off-set impact, in contrast to the force based design rules in the current U. S. federal underride standards. The Australian recommendations are based on 30 years of research and experience. (Note: the document in its entirety can be accessed at the top of this post.)
The formal period for submission of Public Comments ends today, September 21, 2015. Upon the request of several groups, I made a request that the period be extended for a short time. That request is under consideration by the agency. All published Public Comments can be found at this site, which is updated as submissions are made: http://www.regulations.gov/#!docketDetail;dct=FR+PR+N+O+SR;rpp=10;po=0;D=NHTSA-2015-0070
George Rechnitzer and Raphael Grzebieta have, unfortunately, faced similar challenges in Australia in trying to persuade the powers that be to make rules which would prevent unnecessary and horrific deaths and injuries. However, they are encouraged by potential upcoming changes in their country:
To break the impasse between safety stakeholders and regulators, the Authors of this submission have proposed to incorporate into the revision of the ASNZS3845.2 Australian Road Safety Barrier Systems and Devices a crash test performance requirement for rear under-run barriers for heavy trucks, shortly to be released for public comment. In that standard test requirements for under-ride barriers, called Truck Under-run Barriers (TUBs), has been developed and now included. We hope that this standard will be approved by committee members (members include Australian State Government regulators) and hopefully will be published in early 2016.
We look forward to working with George and Raphael at the Underride Roundtable in the Spring of 2016 and know that our country can greatly benefit from their expertise.
After hearing that several groups were hoping that they could have more time (beyond the current deadline of September 21) to prepare a Public Comment on the Advanced Notice of Proposed Rule Making (ANPRM) on Underride Protection of Single Unit Trucks, I contacted NHTSA and filed a request to extend the Public Comment period.
The agency replied that they are considering my request. It usually takes at least 10 calendar days for such a process. I hope that this helps with providing useful information but does not lead to unnecessary delay of the needed rulemaking.
Photo by me of a Single Unit Truck I saw on the expressway a few months ago.
One of our Underride Research funding goals is to cover the costs of crash testing at IIHS ($25,000) of an innovative underride prevention system designed by Aaron Kiefer, a forensic engineer (he does crash reconstructions) here in North Carolina. Jerry and I went to see his prototype a few weeks ago. Very cool. It combines side & rear guard protection.
