If a manufacturer knows that one of their products has a defect or flaw or a component which could potentially result in death or serious injury, should they be let off of the hook from being accountable for the consequences of their refusal to improve the safety of their product?
What do you think? What would you think if you were the victim (or if someone whom you knew was the victim) of such an “oversight”?
Does a cost/benefit analysis which indicates that making the change would be “too costly” (i.e., costs “outweigh” the benefits of saved lives) excuse them from responsibility?
Read about the GM settlement over deaths due to installation of defective ignition switches:
“‘GM killed over a 100 people by knowingly putting a defective ignition switch into over one million vehicles,’ said Clarence Ditlow of the Center for Auto Safety. ‘Yet no one from GM went to jail or was even charged with criminal homicide. This shows a weakness in the law not a weakness in the facts. GM killed innocent consumers. GM has paid millions of dollars to its lobbyists to keep criminal penalties out of the Vehicle Safety Act since 1966. Today thanks to its lobbyists, GM officials walk off scot free while its customers are six feet under.’” – See more at: http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/critics-rip-gm-deferred-prosecution-in-switch-case/#sthash.KW9gdwjA.Tc0H8H28.dpuf
Latest post in The Federal Register for Public Comments on the Advanced Notice of Proposed Rule Making for underride protection on Single Unit Trucks (SUTS) includes comments on suggestions for side guards to protect cyclists:
After the success of the AnnaLeah & Mary for Truck Safety Petition in 2014 on The Petition Site, we went back to Care2 where it was hosted online and gave them an update on our efforts. They decided to write an article on our safety advocacy efforts.
There have been some comments added to the Public Comments on the Federal Register for the Advanced Notice of Proposed Rule Making on rear underride protection for Single Unit Trucks (SUTS).
The Public Comment period is currently scheduled to end on September 21, 2015. We encourage you to add your comment to this process to indicate support for the inclusion of Single Unit Trucks in the requirements for underride protection.
(Just a note: It doesn’t matter who is at fault in these kinds of crashes of a smaller vehicle into a larger truck; if the underride guards could prevent the smaller vehicle from riding under the truck, the tragedy of death and horrific injury could be avoided.)
Imagine a world where a race car crashes into SAFER* Barrier soft-wall technology and a race car driver climbs out of the smashed car–waving to a cheering crowd. (It happens at most every NASCAR racetrack!)
* SAFER = Steel And Foam Energy Reduction
Now imagine a world where a car regrettably crashes into a much larger truck and SAFER technology prevents it from riding underneath the truck. The car driver and passengers get out of their mangled car–shaken up but thankful to be alive and able to tell their story.
Help us make this a true story! Every $1 donated for truck underride research through AnnaLeah & Mary for Truck Safety will bring us closer to the goal of preventing deadly underride crashes.
AnnaLeah & Mary for Truck Safety is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. We are eligible to receive contributions that may be tax deductible for the donor.
After the success of the AnnaLeah & Mary Stand Up For Truck Safety Petition, our daughter, Rebekah, set up a Twitter account to help us raise awareness about truck safety issues.
As I was browsing Tweets one day, I was intrigued by a “Thank you!” to Dr. Dean Sicking for SAVING MANY LIVES through the SAFER barrier he designed for NASCAR:
Great shout out to one of the major safety innovators in auto racing. How many lives has Dean Sicking’s work saved? http://usat.ly/1E21Xws “
I called Dean and told him our story; then I asked him if he thought he could use the same technology to design safer underride guards on trucks. He said, “Yes!” And, a few weeks later, he sent me a detailed proposal for an underride prevention research project:
The only problem is that there is no one putting money toward underride research. Not a priority. So, we are launching a fundraising campaign to raise at least $200,000 to fund: Dr. Sicking’s Underride Research Project ($138,040)–along with College Underride Senior Design Projects (including a team of six students at Virginia Tech), and additional promising underride research by engineers who share our concern about the current underride problem and think that they can come up with an effective solution. Crash testing at IIHS for any prototypes developed could cost $25,000 for the purchase of a trailer and a car.
Plans are also underway for an Underride Roundtable in Spring 2016 to bring together engineering experts and industry representatives. We also hope to publish a compilation of all this underride research to be made available in print as well as digital format.
Please help us prevent future unnecessary deaths due to underride crashes. Every $1 contributed to this cause will enable us to support vital underride research, which will make it possible to make safer trucks and thereby save other families the heartache of such tragic loss that we know all too well.
Please share this opportunity by any means you can, including the sharing buttons on the donation site or by this clickable & printable AnnaLeah & Mary for Truck Safety Underride Research brochure: ALMFTS Underride Guard Research Brochure
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has been instrumental in researching and reporting on underride crash testing and our story: IIHS Status Report October 2014
Watch how Dean Sicking’s SAFER Barrier soft-wall technology protected Danica Patrick from suffering the same fate as Dale Earnhardt:
Last evening, Jerry and I had a Skype phone call with Dr. George Rechnitzer from Melbourne, Australia. We had been corresponding with him via email for a few days, and he finally decided that we needed to have an actual conversation.
We had discovered the day before that George had done research twenty years ago to prove that more effective underride guards could be designed, built, and crash tested on actual trucks–at 75 km/h or 46 m/h.
George, a professor and researcher from Australia who has done research with Transport and Road Safety Research (TARS) authored this 315-page dissertation in 2003: The Improvement of Heavy Vehicle Design To Reduce Injury Risk In Crashes With Other Road Usershttps://www.filesanywhere.com/fs/v.aspx?v=8b6a69875e67767ca2a4
