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.
On average, 40,000 people die each year in crashes. Currently, the Department of Transportation makes highway safety rules based upon how much safety measures will cost. We are hoping to change that and promote a Vision Zero safety strategy model with goals of Zero Deaths, Zero Injuries, Zero Fear of Traffic.
One of the biggest challenges to making change is the cost/benefit analysis. On the one side there are lives to be saved and on the other side there are companies working to make money. The trick is to try and meet everyone’s needs. The solution has to be effective in saving lives while still being affordable for companies so that they can make the changes necessary without a lot of struggle.
The problem comes in when human life and health get the short end of the stick. The result is that many safety measures are stopped because they would cost more to implement than the “worth” of the “small” number of human lives which would be saved. That’s just not right.
After losing two daughters in a truck underride crash on May 4, 2013, our family made a positive impact one year later by taking over 11,000 signatures on our AnnaLeah & Mary Stand Up For Truck Safety Care2 Petition to DOT in Washington, DC. And we have set up a non-profit to promote highway safety research and federal regulations to protect motorists, pedestrians, & cyclists.
Sign our new petition to let DOT Secretary Anthony Foxx know that we want him to:
1. Change rulemaking policy to move away from an economic-rationalist cost/benefit model and adopt a more humanistic, rational Vision Zero safety strategy model. “Vision Zero states that the loss of human life and health is unacceptable and therefore the road transport system should be designed in a way that such events do not occur.” http://tinyurl.com/9uhzyux
2. Apply Vision Zero principles by requiring crash test-based performance standards for truck underride guards rather than force-based design standards along with success at higher speeds—to include rear (both centered and offset) and side guards for both Single Unit Trucks and trailers.
3. Apply Vision Zero principles by requiring NHTSA to initiate rulemaking to require forward collision avoidance and mitigation braking (F-CAM) systems on all new large trucks and buses with a gross vehicle weight rating of 10,000 lbs. or more.
Vision Zero*: Aim high for Zero Crash Deaths & Zero Serious Injuries
* “Vision Zero is a multi-national road traffic safety project which aims to achieve a highway system with no fatalities or serious injuries in road traffic. It started in Sweden and was approved by their parliament in October 1997.[1] A core principle of the vision is that ‘Life and health can never be exchanged for other benefits within the society’ rather than the more conventional comparison between costs and benefits, where a monetary value is placed on life and health, and then that value is used to decide how much money to spend on a road network towards the benefit of decreasing how much risk.”
Crash Avoidance is a broad topic and I am just beginning to write about it. The basic idea, of course, is to find a way to reduce the number of crashes that take place on our roads. The question is how to do that.
There are many devices and systems being produced and in the process of being developed which could, in fact, make a big difference in preventing collisions. I hope to find out more about them and to advocate for the implementation and regulation of appropriate crash avoidance technologies on large trucks, as well as cars.
Read this article from February 2015, when safety advocates were urging NHTSA to “initiate a rulemaking that would require forward collision avoidance and mitigation braking (F-CAM) systems on all new trucks and buses rated at 10,000 pounds or more GVW. The lobbies argue that specific technology exists that would markedly reduce truck-related crashes if it were mandated on commercial vehicles.”
In this same article, the ATA made a statement about the safety advocates’ petition:
“Sean McNally, Vice President of Public Affairs for the American Trucking Associations told HDT, that the trucking lobby ‘supports proven safety technologies that prevent crashes and, therefore, save lives. ATA plans to carefully review the data cited in this petition to make an informed decision on the efficacy of the recommended approach.
“’More importantly,’ he continued, ‘any organization truly interested in highway safety should be urging NHTSA to first take action on ATA’s 2006 petition -now almost nine years old – seeking a new rule requiring large trucks to be electronically speed-governed/limited at no more than 65 mph. [That’s] an approach ATA knows would reduce the frequency and severity of crashes.’”
Of course, there is no proof that the truck driver in our crash was going over 65–just going too fast for the traffic conditions.
Our crash: We were driving in the right lane and had slowed down in response to stopped traffic ahead of us (due to another crash two miles ahead that happened two hours earlier). Suddenly, we were hit by a car carrier in the left lane, spun around, and hit again so that we were pushed backward into the rear of the truck ahead of us. A truck driver behind us had noted that the truck driver who hit us was going too fast for the conditions and didn’t look like he was going to be able to stop for the slowdown. And then he saw him hit us.
Charges: One count of failure to maintain lane & 2 counts of homicide by vehicle (2nd degree)
The other thing is that I want to emphasize that there are so many factors that lead to crashes and also to deaths and serious injuries that sometimes happen as a result of those collisions. So it is important to not focus on just one of these factors but to take a multi-pronged approach.
Take our crash for example: https://annaleahmary.com/2014/07/our-crash-was-not-an-accident/ . Could crash avoidance technology, had it been installed on the truck that hit us, have prevented our crash? But the crash did happen and the other thing was that perhaps it would not have had the same outcome if the underride guard had withstood the crash and the back of the truck ahead of us had therefore not made contact with AnnaLeah and Mary who were sitting in the back seat.
Let’s work together to implement every possible safety measure to prevent collisions and“second collisions.”
Vision Zero*: Aim high for Zero Crash Deaths & Zero Serious Injuries
* “Vision Zero is a multi-national road traffic safety project which aims to achieve a highway system with no fatalities or serious injuries in road traffic. It started in Sweden and was approved by their parliament in October 1997.[1] A core principle of the vision is that ‘Life and health can never be exchanged for other benefits within the society’ rather than the more conventional comparison between costs and benefits, where a monetary value is placed on life and health, and then that value is used to decide how much money to spend on a road network towards the benefit of decreasing how much risk.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero
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.
Does a vehicle manufacturer bear responsibility for death and injury caused by a safety defect in their product:
ever?
and, especially do they do so when it is publicly known (in the engineering realm) that there is a solution to the problem which could — if implemented — prevent death and horrific injury?
Or, are they protected by following the letter of the law — which likewise might have been negligent to require the best possible protection?
Furthermore, if they do bear responsibility, then what price should they pay for negligence to act on that knowledge in a timely fashion?
I have been trying to look at it every which way and not merely as the mother of two daughters, AnnaLeah (forever 17) and Mary (forever 13), who happened to get killed by a truck underride crash in which the underride guard met current federal standards, and possibly even the Canadian standards, but did not make use of safer known technology and did not withstand the crash.
I am plagued by so many questions:
Did the manufacturer’s act of omission contribute to Mary’s and AnnaLeah’s deaths? (omission: http://tinyurl.com/o2z6meb )
If so, why are they not being held responsible for such a heinous action? (heinous: http://tinyurl.com/ncak6o2 )
What consequences should they pay for their negligence?
Is the manufacturer excused from responsibility for their deaths because it was not technically illegal (they abided by the letter of the law)?
If current and future research shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that safer underride prevention systems can, in fact, be put in place on trucks, can truck manufacturers be freed from responsibility to implement such technology due to supposed “unreasonable” costs? (A frequent reason for less-than-adequate rules to be issued — if issued at all.)
Do informed regulators who do not write into law the safest possible technology bear any responsibility?
Do informed truck purchasers who do not buy trucks with the safest possible technology (even if not required by law) bear responsibility?
I even have to ask myself if I am taking the chance of sabotaging our goal of seeking stronger federal standards by raising these controversial, potentially-inflammatory questions.
So you see, I am not struggling with easy questions. But you have to admit, don’t you, that they are questions with life & death implications.
This question of manufacturer criminal liability is addressed in a New York Times editorial today (July 21, 2015):
“The Senate bill also falls well short of addressing important issues raised by recent scandals involving defects in General Motors’ ignition switches and Takata airbags. While it would raise the maximum fine that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration can levy against automakers that do not promptly disclose defects to $70 million from $35 million, that increase is a pittance for companies that make billions in profits. And by not proposing criminal liability for executives who knowingly hide the life-threatening dangers of their products, the bill simply sidesteps the issue of individual accountability.”
From my morning reading: “The mouth of the righteous utters wisdom, and his tongue speaks justice. The Law of his God is in his heart; his steps do not slip.” Psalm 37:30-31
Chrysler and the Defective Design of Jeeps with Unsafe Fuel Tanks …..
A Failure of Compassion, and Tactics of Conceal-‐Delay-‐Deny While Fiery Crashes Occur
by Byron Bloch, Auto Safety Expert, Potomac, Maryland
www.AutoSafetyExpert.com Byron@AutoSafetyExpert.com
Presentation at National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
NHTSA Public Hearing on July 2nd, 2015 -‐-‐-‐Washington, D.C.
“From my perspective of about 50 years in the auto safety trenches, I’ve seen that NHTSA has too often been a slowly reactive agency, rather than being pro-active in analyzing vehicle design and performance in real-world accidents.
I’ve seen where automaker documents produced in product-liability court cases reveal that the company has known of the dangers and safety defects for many years, but preferred to conceal that knowledge, then delay its release, and then deny that it ever knew what the documents revealed.
The Chrysler secretly-negotiated deal with NHTSA, without any public hearing, to provide trailer hitches as a so-called recall fix to improve fuel tank protection, but only in low-speed accidents, makes a mockery of what should be done.
Look instead to what NASCAR and helicopters and military aircraft utilize for fuel tank safety, and you’ll see safety technology that could and should be utilized. But that would require compassion… and that’s not yet a Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard.
Let’s together join forces to fight for safer vehicles for us all, with the vision of zero fatalities… by preventing vehicle accidents, and by more crashworthy vehicles to protect occupants when accidents occur, and by the elimination of needlessly unsafe and defective designs.
Different Version of Highway Safety Bill by Republicans and Democrats Reflect Different Vision of Public Safety Needs in Response to the Largest Vehicle Safety Recalls in History and Mounting Truck Crash Deaths and Injuries: Safety Advocates JOINT STATEMENT 7-10-2015
In our quest to help prevent countless more lives from being foreverchanged, we have come up against the brick wall of attitudes which appear callous and too-accepting of crash deaths as an inevitable outcome of highway travel.
It is refreshing, therefore, to hear others who hold a different outlook and are bold to pursue it.
George starts out by saying, “. . .a front page feature caught my attention regarding: ‘community outrage’ following Australia’s well known crocodile man Steve Irwin holding his one-month old baby in one hand and feeding a large crocodile with the other. His response at such apparent community outrage and concern over the safety of his infant was that he was more worried about the safety of the baby travelling in a car than being eaten by a croc. I thought he had a point. . .
“Thinking of crocodiles, it also reminded me, once again, in this new year, of ‘crocodile tears’ being shed in some quarters over road safety, but little being done about conspicuous and well known causes of hundreds of fatalities and serious injuries on Australia’s roads every year–that is, crashes involving heavy vehicles and other road users.
“The biggest obstacle to improved heavy vehicle safety is a system that encourages and enables bureaucrats, regulators, and safety exponents, to hide behind mindless cost-benefit calculations to avoid requiring known and effective design improvements to heavy vehicles*. Yes, cost-benefit analysis indeed is the main culprit. In this regard, it is my opinion that Sweden has got it right, with their Vision Zero philosophy [13], which states that, ‘Life and health can never be exchanged for other benefits within the society.'”
George goes on to say, “So what cost-benefit analyses really means, is that when no action is taken to improve the design of heavy vehicles, people’s lives are being traded for reduced transport costs.”
“The Swedish Approach to Road Safety: The Accident is Not the Major Problem,” by Sarah Goodyear, http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/11/the-swedish-approach-to-road-safety-the-accident-is-not-the-major-problem/382995/“The largest resistance we got to the idea about Vision Zero was from those political economists that have built their whole career on cost-benefit analysis. For them it is very difficult to buy into ‘zero.’ Because in their economic models, you have costs and benefits, and although they might not say it explicitly, the idea is that there is an optimum number of fatalities. A price that you have to pay for transport.
‘The problem is the whole transport sector is quite influenced by the whole utilitarianist mindset. Now we’re bringing in the idea that it’s not acceptable to be killed or seriously injured when you’re transporting. It’s more a civil-rights thing that you bring into the policy.”
(* My note: For example, improved rear underride guards, side underride guards, front underride guards. mwkarth)
My parents grew up in a relatively small town. After they married, they moved to a bigger city. But my dad’s brother married my mom’s sister, and then my aunt and uncle took over a dairy farm which was in the family. For years, my family drove an hour north on many Sundays of the year to have a big family meal with two sets of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and lots of cousins.
I often spent vacations there, including a few weeks in the summer when I helped with the haying, feeding the chickens, gathering eggs, playing in the hayloft, cutting the big country lawn, chasing the cows out of the cornfield, repairing the fences, and picking strawberries from the patch.
Now it is no more. For one thing, the government bought them out to put an expressway through the old farm. They moved into a new house which they built nearby next to the family sugarbush. These days, it seems odd to shop at a major grocery store where I used to pick apples, explore old family outbuildings, bale hay, and hide in the tall, waving grass.
Two of their sons–my double cousins–bought some property a few miles away and managed a dairy farm of their own. They took out some loans to build a new barn and get new milking equipment. It got to a point where it was no longer affordable to run the small family dairy farm and make a living wage.* They sold the cows. And now they have sold the farm. An era is over.
I thought about all of this, on a recent trip “back home”, as I reflected on the plight of small trucking companies and independent owner-operator truck drivers. Are the costs of owning a company and the pressure to drive many miles creating a situation where they won’t be able to stay in business?
Frequently, I hear that changes of one kind or another in the trucking industry–in order to improve safety (i.e., reduce crashes, injuries and deaths)–will result in increased costs for the trucking companies. I hear that it will put them out of business.
Is this true? According to whom and based on what information? If it is true, then does something need to change in the trucking industry itself in order to allow for the beneficial work, which trucking provides, to continue but to also allow for truckers to make a decent living wage–without jeopardizing their health and the safety of travelers on the roads?
Will this someday be an era that is over, or can we fix the problems for the benefit of all? Who pays for Safety? And can we figure out how to fairly and logically spread the increased costs around? The alternative seems to be unacceptable: Forget safety and let the cost be spilled blood.
(* I might not have gotten all of the details of the family farm history exactly correct, but I hope you can see the picture that I am trying to paint.)
Cost of Electronic Logging Devices: http://www.vdoroadlog.com/products/electronic-logging-devices-eld/roadlog-eld/ “As you probably know, the fees for other manufacturers’ electronic log systems can add up to thousands of dollars in just a few years time, and that’s a real roadblock for many Owner Operators. RoadLog is available with no fees and no monthly contract.”
OOIDA contends that an increase in insurance would be a death nail for the small businesses that comprise over 90 percent of the trucking industry.
In response to OOIDA’s comment about “fewer than one percent,” our son Peter made this observation prior to our meeting with FMCSA on May 5, 2014,
The 1% issue is at best a red herring. Refusing to raise a limit because such a small percentage reach the limit only indicates that the increase in cost should be minimal. It can’t be both ways, either this increase should raise the cost of doing business or the effect should be minimal.
This isn’t life insurance where all the money is always paid out. Nor is this homeowner’s insurance in which you have a set amount of house that can be destroyed. This is liability insurance in which the amount paid out is based on the amount of damage being done. If such a small percentage of claims reaches the limit, then greedy lawyers, increased costs, and mythical “windfall” payments are all proven absurd or irrelevant.
We are a 23 truck fleet and carry 25 million in liability insurance. We carry that much to protect not only us but our customers. The argument that only 1 % of the claims exceed the current threshold for insurance makes no sense. You carry insurance to cover you no matter what happens. 1 % exposure is too much. The fact that it seldom happens makes the coverage cheap. The actuaries price according to probability. I don’t believe that this coverage will be cost prohibitive unless the carrier has a dismal safety rating in which case they shouldn’t be in business. When carriers don’t carry enough coverage the expose responsible carriers, shippers and the general public. We need responsible carriers, pricing their services correctly to cover all costs and excepting responsibility for the liability created by their business. Skirting this liability and charging for services is deceptive to shippers and puts the public or state at financial risk in the form of a claim that is part of a service they get no remuneration for. When you provide a service, charge fees and profit you must also be responsible financially which means carrying adequate insurance.
“. . . many of the truck drivers/companies which I see making comments complain about how the premiums will skyrocket. But on what are they basing that opinion?
John Lannen, executive director of the Truck Safety Coalition, has shared background information with us which he has gathered from numerous sources, presentations, and conversations regarding the economics of additional insurance coverage for motor carriers. It turns out that the first million dollars’ worth of trucking insurance is the most expensive and each incremental amount is cheaper. . . . ” (For more details, go here: https://annaleahmary.com/2015/06/trucking-minimum-liability-insurance-trucker-wages-a-facebook-conversation/ )
The Cartwright Amendment, which would allow FMCSA to continue the process of updating trucking minimum liability insurance–to protect both trucking company and crash victims–was defeated in the House today:
I was up late last night reading a lengthy article about the engineering perspective on automotive safety issues. It was worth the read to find out how “they” think.
I could quote lots of things from that article, but I will start with this one from David Friedman, Deputy Administrator of NHTSA:
“I would argue that our nation has a low tolerance for fatalities associated with airplanes, the N.H.T.S.A.’s David Friedman told me, when we spoke late last year. In part because of that, fatalities are very, very low from aircraft. Also in part because of that, the F.A.A. has close to fifty thousand employees—an order of magnitude more employees than we do. We have six hundred. To deal with ten thousand people who are dying from drunk driving or ten thousand dying because they didn’t wear a seat belt, or the three thousand dying from distracted driving, or the four thousand dying because they are pedestrians or bicyclists and they are hit by a car. That’s why the Administration has been asking Congress for more resources for us. With more resources, we could save more lives. And each time the answer from Congress has been no. Zero.”
(Don’t forget the four thousand dying per year from truck crashes.)
That’s what I would like to become prevalent in our nation: A Low Tolerance For Crash Fatalities. An Outcry at the Rampant* Carnage on our Roads.
