Trapped Under Trucks
propublica.org
propublica.org
Not going to defend NHTSA here, but it's a good idea to pass laws like this. NHTSA would likely have been sued if they passed the rule. Having a law really cuts down on the lawsuits.
After reading 5th Risk by Michael Lewis, I updated my thinking about government agencies. Government agencies are often quite limited by law and cannot advocate for effective policies. Lawmakers really should be updating rules much more often in consultation with agency scientists and specialists. I feel like we've gotten used to lawmakers not doing the jobs they are elected to.
I also believe that we should have a Greenhouse Gas Administration, and not rely on the EPA and Clean Air and Water Acts to cover CO2.
Legislatures are voted in by and answer to the people, at least ostensibly. Government agencies don't necessarily answer to the people.
> They said there’s not enough research to support a government mandate, which would impose huge costs on businesses that operate on thin profit margins.
So thin that they can't afford $127 a truck; they are running a no profit charity out of the goodness of their heart and that pittance of an one-time amount per truck would push them over into red.
When you think about it, that’s an argument FOR requiring these regulations early, like back in the 70s when the issue was on the table. Because when you DO put safety first, engineering now has a bounded problem that they can improve on quickly (which engineers are particularly good at). So, stupid all-around, and tens of thousands of people died for no good reason.
Fortunately the IIHS has been pushing trailer manufacturers to make the change, so newer trailers would not need a retrofit.
That's also what has driven safety changes in passenger cars. Cars have all sorts of technology on board to keep drivers and other traffic participants safe. Liability insurance is not optional so insurers are on the spot when things go badly wrong. So, technology that saves lives saves them money. So, they apply pressure and incentives to make sure vehicle owners buy vehicles where they can get favorable insurance rates.
The reason that so far hasn't happened with trucks is because police and judges go easy on the truckers when bad stuff happens. So they aren't on the spot financially and their insurers aren't either. It's not their problem. Making it their problem is the fix.
No, it's not - at least not in Europe. As long as a vehicle complies to the standards in force when it was built and the type license issued to the manufacturer then, you're not required to retrofit anything to old(er) vehicles. You're still allowed to drive a 70s era car with no seatbelts and only a driver side mirror if you want to do so.
Change got always enforced by lawmakers - for example, people didn't flock to ABS equipped cars for decades, until the car industry agreed to only sell cars with ABS back in 2004. Hell it took until 2006 for an EU mandate for seat belts for rear passengers.
Iirc, you'd still get charged here if you weren't wearing a seatbelt even if the car was missing them. (based on my limited experience riding in the back of vans with no rear seats.)
I hope my city bans these kind of vehicles in the city streets. I like London's Direct Vision Standard, only allowing trucks with lowered seating and wide/tall side windows. https://i.ytimg.com/vi/i-P20wdrcAQ/maxresdefault.jpg
However the March 2019 GAO report notes that
1. There are no front guards available on the market for retrofitting conventional cabs.
2. There are arguments about their necessity, as conventional cabs tend to have lower frame and bumpers, thus partially fulfilling that role
3. Though it would have to be checked on a case-by-case basis and against clear standards, as bumper heights vary (hence a 2010 NTSB recommendation that the NHTSA develop performance standards, amongst various other recommendations around underride.
The reason they care about breaks and not this is because this doesn't protect them specifically and so they don't give a shit, because they're raging narcissists.... As I have a feeling someone "in this room" is as well...
[a] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ODFL/old-dominion-...
I wonder why.
Another issue is the size of trucks. The state where I lived:
* Truck size was limited, large trucks were only allowed on one Highway. Goods were transferred to smaller Trucks for transport to factories.
* Driving trucks on Sundays was not allowed.
* Large Trucks were not allowed on City Streets. Since this happened it is open season on bicycle riders.
Reagan de-regulated and Trucks can be any size, plus they can clog the roads on Sunday. The last item I do not know when it was enabled, but it happened after Reagan.
I now heard of trucks with 3 trailers but never saw one. I think it is about time we limit sizes to what existed on the 60s. If you need 3 trailers, time to go back to freight trains.
Trains can only run on train tracks.
The tracks/train stations don't always go close to where the freight needs to go.
It is bordering on impossible to build new rail infrastructure to get freight where it needs to go.
It takes a lot longer to ship something on a train than on a truck.
Add on the fact that transport in general is getting more expensive, and I don't think more regulations on trucking is the right answer.
Just install the guards on the side of trailers and be done with it...
leading to more resource usage?
Where trucks do have the advantage is truckers though. You can saddle them with debt and take all their money as varying fees, then reposses their home and get some new rube to take out a loan to buy it from you.
The truckers are plentiful, and willing to bleed our for a couple crumbs, which is a much better deal than trains where the conductors are union employees. It's much harder to make them take out debt to pay you more
If we had not trucking wouldn’t be the only option and we would be better for it
The EU shifts about 10 times by truck as by train
Rail freight in the US is praiseworthy.
watch the video and get back to me on that statement.
This is a solved problem.
At least now in the USA I can go do what I want. It's like any other day. I don't need to stuff everything in my Saturday.
And if that means that I'll pass a couple of Semi trucks? No problem. Hell, I'll move out of the way for them. After all, there isn't a single thing in my hands that hasn't been delivered by a truck.
He's wrong anyway, there's no ban on general trucking on the weekends in Belgium, only oversized loads. He is right about strict labor laws, you'll barely find any open stores on a Sunday, besides restaurants, bars and some other forms of entertainment.
But yeah, God forbid you can't go to the European equivalent of a Best Buy on a Sunday, so some retail worker can enjoy their weekend.
I never got this? The only thing to do in your mind is shopping?
Restaurants, cinemas, other leisure activities are all available right?
If I have 8 days off per month that literally removes 3/8, or 37.5%.
Also larger grocery stores aren't open unless they get an exception.
Quieter, sure.
Not really the point but thanks. Pretty sure a collision with any 2000lb metal shape isn't going to go well.
>some of the pressure on limiting truck traffic through rural areas on Sundays (or on some roads in general) came from a large amount of fatal collisions involving trucks passing through, whereas ordinary car drivers drive more cautiously through these villages.
If that was the point, then boy was that a terrible solution. Rather than fixing the root cause you have 'fixed' the problem 1/7 days of the week. The other 6/7 days of the week you have drivers coming through so bad at driving they banned driving one day out of the week.
In spite of that weight, lower speeds plus more awareness from the locals driving cars combine to mean lower risk of fatality.
> Rather than fixing the root cause
What is it to fix the “root cause” according to you? Sometimes the building of a new motorway to take trucks away from those roads, takes years. To build other roads in a village where children can play may not be feasible in the short-term due to surrounding agriculture or marshy ground. If, as you favour, trucks were allowed to run through every day in the meantime, there would be no day of the week children could play so safely outside.
Traffic calming sends a very clear, very obvious signal to drivers: slow the f*ck down, because you don't have a choice. It can include big tree branches hanging out over the road, narrower lanes, pinchpoints, speed humps and raised pedestrian crossings, and more.[1] Many of which are relatively low-cost to implement. Certainly, it's far cheaper than building a new highway.
I doubt that those rules were implemented strictly because of pedestrian safety versus expectations of Sunday as a "rest day" versus latching onto it as a post hoc justification--or really just an extra perk--for the rule. And hey, if it does make Sunday a bit safer for kids to play, it's not like that's a bad thing. It's just that the next thought should be "well, how do we make the other six days safer as well?"
0. https://highways.dot.gov/safety/speed-management/traffic-cal...
1. https://globaldesigningcities.org/publication/global-street-...
I'm guessing that the charges were likely dropped because they couldn't prove that the truck suddenly entered a lane of traffic, having no right-of-way, and leaving the oncoming vehicle no time to stop.
In Oregon, they are only allowed on I-5 between Eugene and Portland, must be less than 105 feet total, and not allowed at night, weekends, holidays, etc.
They use shorter trailers.. but man, that last trailer is doing lots of swaying back and forth..
If you want federal highway money, then your highways need to conform to federal standards. These standards allow for trailers up to 53' in length and up to 80,000lbs to operate without any prior authorization as long as they otherwise conform to vehicle standards.
States are always free to turn down the money and enact whatever standards they like; however, the standards seem incredibly reasonable to me and not at all something you can simply blame on a single President passing laws sent to him by Congress. States also have the task of enforcing laws on the highway and can operate commercial vehicle checkpoints.
> I now heard of trucks with 3 trailers but never saw one. [...] time to go back to freight trains.
You're still limited by overall length. FedEx will often operate two short trailers in an articulated tandem. They do this for what I hope are obvious reasons that cannot be fulfilled by rail transport.
On the whole, I don't understand why the objection is there: are bars all that expensive? For comparison, here are Daimler trucks sold in India [2] - side protection is clearly visible. (Admittedly, they are high-end trucks as far as the Indian market is concerned.)
Weight is also an issue, though in this case at least the weight is low to the ground and would improve the trailer's stability.
However, for safety, you would have to put steel bars behind the plastic.
From the article:
> The beefier, more robust rear guards would’ve cost an additional $127 each, according to industry estimates.
I'm inclined to think that 127 USD (even if the side rails were a little bit more expensive because they're larger) is not too expensive for a feature like this.
Also, I think that in Europe these rails are already mandatory. At least the rear guard is required in The Netherlands if the trailer protrudes >60cm at the rear iirc.
Bicyclists have way less momentum, so sliding under would be less of a risk, I think. They experience plenty of other risks though.
The strength requirements are similar to the US standard (resistance to point loads of 50kN at 1/8th of the horizontal member from the outside, 100kN at the centerline, and 50kN at 355~635mm from the centerline), but the EU has mandated front and side guards (as well as back which the US also mandates) since 1994.
Of note: a 2012 IIHS study indicated that only 15% of collisions between cars and large trucks were rear collisions , 22% are to the side of the truck, and 63 to the front.
I'm not in the market (nor the region), but for a new semi-truck plus bed I guess you're going to expend north of $200K. A thousand or two in security features is absolutely nothing. So instead of a low percentage of vehicles expending a little money on security features, they want the rest of the world to buy way more expensive and ridiculously big cars? Upgrading a single vehicle to a SUV would be way more expensive than their upgrades.
Regular cars have all sorts of active and passive safety features for the people inside, and for pedestrians and other vehicles outside, and that's fine. I don't tell pedestrians to buy an armor if they want to be safe when I'm driving around.
NHTSA officials don't have time to do that of course, they are too busy denying right to repair in order to "protect" motorists https://youtube.com/watch?v=2nXVljRUnoc
As an external observer (I don't live in the USA) it seems to me that the NHTSA is captured by lobbyists, as a result it is currently only there to protect the interests of auto makers, instead of protecting traffic safety. Why is this illegal behaviour not investigated?
Congress finally forced NHTSA to take action in 2021 with a timeline of two years, but they still aren't available because now the NHTSA is dragging their feet on testing. Meanwhile American car companies like Ford sell adaptive headlights overseas but we make do with 1960's technology in the US. I wonder how many lives have been lost in the meantime?
What's the method of forcing them to do it, though? Like, if it's not done in two years, what happens?
H.R.3684 - Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act 117th Congress (2021-2022)
Rulemaking.--Not later than 2 years after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall issue a final rule amending Standard 108..[lots of text omitted]..to allow for the use on vehicles of adaptive driving beam headlamp systems.
There's an interesting article about it here. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/18/business/us-approves-smar...
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2004/11/05/04-2473...
...and then updated two years later.
Still watered down to the point of near uselessness in order to placate the trucking industry lobbyists.
Source: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unterfahrschutz_(Nutzfahrzeug)... (in German)
There's probably an "official" name in some dusty Ministry of Transport document like "side protection collision bar" or some such, and TÜV probably calls it something like "Seitenaufprallschutzgerätüberlaufschutzausrüstung" or some damn thing.
Hinterer Unterfahrschutz
https://www.trucknews.com/features/are-standards-for-trailer...
https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/iihs-recognizes-semitrailer...
Maybe it was just my perception, but I remember driving in Germany (long time ago) and noting how trucks seemed to be driving at a reasonable speed over in the right lane.
Very different from highways in the US where trucks typically drive as if they were just another sedan on the road.
They look to be more aerodynamic, they can hold more stuff, and they would prevent the problems presented in the article.
Maybe does it have to do with the fact that loading docks are already high, and this would make the loading process more cumbersome? I am not sure...
The vast vast majority of trucks are not filled to the brim (and even if they're at their weight limit, they often have "air" in the box).
"Lowboys" are mainly used for large construction equipment where they need the extra height.
A semi-trailer is a surprisingly cheap piece of equipment.
Some trucks that are special purpose use the lower areas (see https://www.mayflower.com for an example; household movers have more weight capacity than space).
Probably more effective to move the trailer wheels to the far back of the trailer.
385/65 R22.5
to have a flat floor on the trailer with the smaller tyres you've now got to stock another size of tyre or run dual tyres on the trailer.
I think a more sensible design would be to have the middle of the trailer low to the ground with a floor hump above the rear wheel well and the front where it hitches on to the truck, but that would make loading and unloading awkward.
One could imagine having a side door instead of or in addition to a back door, and a lower loading dock.
I get that a rectanglar storage compartment is easier to deal with in a lot of ways, but it just seems ridiculous to have a box riding four feet off the ground, with the wheels causing as much atmospheric drag as they possibly can. This seems like a solution you'd arrive at if you think energy is practically free, and wasting energy has no consequence. It also seems unnecessarily top-heavy, in addition to the safety problems mentioned in the article (and the underride guards proposed to mitigate the safety issue would most likely create even more wind resistance).
It sounds like Marcos' death is blamed on the actions of the truck driver, as well as the lack of an under-ride bumper.
But don't we normally consider drivers responsible for crashing into objects towards which they're travelling?
It doesn't sound like a situation where the truck jumped into traffic suddenly from a hidden driveway:
> The truck edged out of a driveway and began, slowly, to turn left onto the road, blocking traffic in both directions.
I.e., wouldn't death have also been avoided if Marcos had been traveling at a speed that allowed him to stop in time? I'd think that addressing that (if I'm right) would save a lot more than ~100 lives/year.
Growing up, I was told that it's better to be alive than to be "right" as it pertains to right-of-way. You can either insist on continuing because it's your right, or you can brake early assuming they're going to cut you off.
Videos like this are quite disturbing but I would make watching some of them mandatory during the driving course. Some people just dont get they are literally driving lethal weapons.
Admittedly, yes; often when I write “I might...” I’m imagining a perspective adjacent to my own. In theory, I’d take my foot off the gas, put it in a lower gear (“manual” automatic), and watch what the guy does (time pending). I doubt I would really not have enough time to stop given how much I pay attention when driving.
Still, it takes two to tango, as it goes. The driver who died presumably could have and should have been paying more attention. They’d be alive today if they’d been paying enough attention to stop. And they’d be alive today if the truck driver had been more responsible. Keep in mind, the truck driver was hardly risking their own life; this was a lack of consideration for the safety of others.
Pick one
I remember my grandfather telling me long before I could drive:
"You don't want to be dead right."
I wonder which of his marriages taught him that :)
* I mean this with all due respect. The world was a better place with Tom in it.
So what we're left with is defensive driving. If a giant vehicle starts edging out into the road in front of you, assume that the driver doesn't see you at all, and act accordingly.
Frankly, I don't think it's a tired meme: it is absolutely better to be alive than to be right. And sometimes those actually are your only choices.
Citation needed. Look into Finnish driving culture; it seems quite reasonable to see it as nurture over nature. I believe that it would be difficult to effect such a change given the distance between different American subcultures but it’s been demonstrated that a society can actually choose to take this seriously.
> And sometimes those actually are your only choices.
This is the part that needs to die. I was still right when I chose to allow the other driver to cut me off; turns out I’m alive too. It’s not a dichotomy but treating it like it is suggests that the other driver was “right” because I yielded. They were not. I was right and I didn’t do anything dangerous.
That way you can be both right and alive.
As a cyclist I hear this all the time. A thinly veiled threat, if you ask me. "Stop pointing out things that could've been better with our infrastructure or traffic culture, or I'll run you over".
I think including details specific collisions is probably a distraction. Regardless of fault, this type of collision happens; and does the estimate of 200 lives / year justify the cost of adding underguards on trailers? (and rightful grumping about poor quality of statistics)
That's separate from a policy to eliminate driveways on highways above a certain speed, or provide separation of directions to eliminate left turns, or a nationwide 25 mph speed limit, or a separate road network only for large trucks, or whatever proposal you have to reduce the speed of collision here.
FWIW: Here's a street view of US-281 where it enters Hidalgo County, and the posted limit is 60 mph: https://www.google.com.mx/maps/@26.0843029,-97.8616537,3a,75...
Again, we don't know where the collision took place, this is just where I happened to look on the highway where it's roughly paralleling the Rio Grande. A speed limit of 60 mph on a well paved, two lane highway through a rural area is consistent with my expectations.
Closer to McAllen, TX, where the article says the deceased works, it's two lanes in each direction with a center turn lane, and a speed limit 55 mph. https://www.google.com/maps/@26.1518933,-98.1911449,3a,75y,2...
No. If you are traveling a highway at posted speed and have a green light, and someone makes a left turn across your path, you’re not responsible if you can’t stop in time. The turning vehicle must yield to all oncoming vehicles close enough to be a hazard.
Similarly no, you are not responsible if you hit a truck that simply pulls straight out onto a street with no regard for the oncoming vehicles, which have the right of way.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VvRPzvh-ZOE&t=100 as an example that I recall watching with some outrage.
Less outrageous is the requirement in many jurisdictions for vehicles to avoid collisions when possible and providing a general principle that a vehicle with the right of way but still having the last clear chance to avoid a collision is at fault for failing to do so.
But I think it really just doesn't matter whose fault it was. Regardless of whether or not the crash itself was preventable, the death was preventable, if these trucking companies would spend a measly $127 per trailer to help protect drivers of normal-sized vehicles. People are fallible. We know this. The entire point of vehicle safety is to acknowledge that people will screw up, and to minimize the injury and loss of life when it happens.
(And I don't find it remotely persuasive that $127 per trailer is a huge burden on their "razor thin" margins. If they're not making more than $127 in profit _per haul_, the entire trucking industry would be unsustainably pointless.)
There was one point where the reporter was interviewing a guy from the ATA (American Trucking Associations) where the ATA person says that one lost life is too many. And this is very common across so many industries, safety first as they always say.
But then as soon as you put a cost associated with saving a life, the whole idea of safety first goes out the window. In this case, underrides are clearly avoidable and really don't cost that much to prevent. Retrofitted truck solutions are available, cheap, and easy to install.
It just irks me that so many industries preach about safety, but as soon as it has even the most minor impact on the bottom line, it becomes a hot topic. They should really be saying, "Safety first (but only after profits, shareholders, revenue, etc)"
I get that businesses need to make money to stay afloat, but with a profit margin of 14% [0], surely there is room to save some lives.
[0] https://www.projectionhub.com/post/10-trucking-industry-fina...
You see the same crap inside companies. All-hands rah-rah meetings or zoom calls or mass emails with this kind of stuff in it, then the next day, directives to the contrary. Or, the handbook says to do X, for safety reasons, but your supervisor says to do Y that will be impossible to accomplish if you do X, like you're supposed to.
In union shops the workers often have leverage to point at the handbook, laws, or contract, and tell their supervisor to get fucked, but others just have to deal with it or find another job. Ditto non-safety stuff like violating the company's own policies on shift scheduling, or overtime wage-theft, or any number of other things.
My favorite example of this is the "children under 2 don't need their own airline seat". The idea was that if you required a separate seat, more people would drive. That in turn would lead to more fatalities as the fatality/mile in cars is so much higher than in planes.
I would also point out that if someone has purchased life insurance, they have explicitly made a decision about the cost of a life when they choose the amount of insurance they are willing to take on.
This doesn't follow. It's not as if you're only allowed to purchase life insurance if it somehow accounts for the entire "cost of your life", whatever that is. I doubt most policies and policy-buyers attempt to achieve that, though some might.
[EDIT] To expand a bit, I'm pretty sure a lot of policies are purchased with goal-oriented thinking, and that goal's usually not "account for the cost of the life": for an older person, it might be "ensure end-of-life expenses are covered". For a younger one, it might be "make sure my family's OK until they can recover from the loss, which I guesstimate to require $X" or "make sure my family can afford to remain where they are at least until the kids are out of school"
Isn't that the amount they can afford, rather than the value? Their wage is roughly irrelevant to their value
Will check it out.
There's a reasonable argument to not even bother with retrofitting. This has been a known issue for decades, just start building it into new trailers, and eventually the old trailers will age out and/or become uninsurable.
How long do trailers last?
Ban large trucks from city roads (including highway sections) during daytime.
The large US cities are getting dense enough to start enacting rules from third world countries.
No amount of safety regulations will make these issues go away.
While I can't really verify that's true, it tracks with behavior I see of truck drivers in tight quarters; it's been trending towards this "I'm turning and I barely care if you're able to stop in time" kind of behavior.
I don't think most drivers are waiting for permission from their superiors to break traffic laws...
I mean to bring up the point that Management is complicit in this. They might fire this driver as a token measure because someone died (part of me even sees the driver as a victim in such a scenario) but they’re not going to stop encouraging the behavior that gets people killed. It’s not much speculation that one of Management’s primary concerns right now is “how expensive” this is and probably not much consideration is given about how to improve the situation. (Especially not if the solutions are all cost and no gain; it would be irresponsible of them to lower their profitability if they’re publicly traded. /s)
As part of the agreement, the firms would keep crucial safety information confidential. That material — including ‘documents, factual material, mental impressions, interview reports, expert reports, and other information’ — wasn’t to be shared with anyone outside of the circle.”
This…sounds like someone took notes on their criminal conspiracy.
Has any prosecutor said they’re looking at this?
https://ustrailerparts.com/icc-bumper-assy-no-s-tubes/
And certainly we can have all the same arguments about the cost of a human life vs. corporate greed, etc. etc. at a more realistic price.
But what this really speaks to is the level of honesty and accuracy of this article. It's a hit piece and is extremely one-sided propaganda, regardless of what anyone thinks is the right thing to do about better bumpers.
Reading the opening story, it sounds like he fell asleep or wasn't paying attention. We will never know, but it's very sad no matter. It's also true, assuming he fell asleep, he could have killed others, as happened to Rod Bramblett and his wife, radio announcer for the Auburn Tigers, who was killed at a stoplight when rear ended by a driver who fell asleep while driving at a high rate of speed. Another sad story.
Hitting an 80,000lb mass in any configuration at high speed is going to be nasty no matter what. One option is to ask truckers to provide heavy bumpers and crumple zones and airbags around their trucks. The other option is to operate your vehicle safely, reducing speed if visibility is limited, etc.
I dont doubt that rear bumpers being stronger would be a good start, but by the same token, the starting assumption of a car rear ending a very large object at 60mph head-on does not seem like a scenario to weigh too heavily in the grand scheme.
However, maybe there is a compromise of better rear guards and 20% additional side coverage by guards? i.e. dont make perfect the enemy of good.
Slamming into the back or coming through the side of a semi-trailer is not something that just happens to "dangerous drivers". It is something that can happen to anyone placed in the wrong place at the wrong time.
That said, the position of the regulators and trucking industry at present make sense, underride crash data indicates that the costs of proposed safety measures could be better spent improving other known road-safety issues with known or projected solutions. And the point that TFA is making is that NHTSA data is severely underreporting underride crash incidents in the sample that they investigated, making underride crash safety regulations worthwhile.
And the mass of the vehicle is really not the issue in this sort of collision. This type of collision would occur in the same exact way if the trailers weighed 1,000 lbs, the bottom of the trailer would shred through the windshield and decapitate the occupants. A better underride guard would turn an unknown number of fatal accidents into scary crashes that people walk away from unharmed.
It's certainly an avoidable mistake, especially on an open highway where the trailer was 'edging slowly' out into traffic. Failing to avoid it results in danger. The article doesn't even mention extenuating circumstances such as a blind turn or something, but even if that were the case, the situation would simply require extra caution to successfully navigate the dangerous area.
"Dangerous" doesn't have to mean intentionally so or that the driver was reckless; the danger could simply be in lacking the experience to recognize the danger that exists.
NHTSA also has to weigh the cost of compliance. Cars also could have stronger A pillars, that way the burden of compliance is placed on the one at higher risk.
The article tries to make it a big conspiracy by Big Truck, that bothered me. Trucks are easy to hate on, but efficient transport over very long distances is a tremendous strength of the American economy.
I mean, one of the people who sued uncovered evidence of a literal conspiracy to hide safety-related data, so I'm not sure why the article's framing should bother you.
> Cars also could have stronger A pillars, that way the burden of compliance is placed on the one at higher risk.
That's not a completely unreasonable take, but my position is that the thing that causes the damage -- the trailer -- should be required to be made less lethal.
It's also unclear that A pillars can be made strong enough to survive those situations anyway. And even if they can, the car's crumple zones (which absorb kinetic energy) won't end up getting "used" in this type of crash, so the A pillar will take all the force, stop the car way faster than an impact on crumple zones would, and throw the driver forward much harder than in other types of crashes, possibly still fatally.
Why not put the burden of compliance of the operators creating the risk?
Otherwise, the trucks will build themselves bigger, such that the improved aframes are no longer sufficient. Somebody walking around with a bomb doesn't make it reasonable for everyone else to have to bomb proof everything
Pickups and SUVs are way safer, guys. Up to you what you do with the information.
The NHTSA stats seem to somewhat contradict this claim. Looks like light trucks (< 10k lbs) have historically had a higher fatal crash rate, both per mile traveled, and per registered vehicle, than passenger cars, up through 2015. The numbers have equalized and maybe gone slightly lower only in the last ~8 years, but certainly not “way” lower. The injury-crash numbers are lower for trucks, so you might be less likely to get injured in a truck, but no less likely to die.
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... - see Table 3, page 23 (Fatal crashes) and page 24 (Injury crashes).
Trucks are heavier and have a longer stopping distance, and for a long time (until 1999) they had much lower safety standards than passenger cars. That’s not to mention it’s maybe short-sighted to ignore many legitimate concerns about air quality, fuel efficiency, children, and where to park, since under-ride crashes are only a teeny tiny fraction of fatal crashes involving any vehicles. I’m pretty sure you’re way better off from a safety perspective just driving a little slower than buying a truck, all else being equal.
Of course.
While being far more dangerous to children due to the low frontal visibility of American style trucks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDH3FDfVQl0
The "huge car to overcompensate for a tiny brain" fad is growing in Europe and it's a travesty.
That's not to say they are wrong, if the fix is as simple and as cheap as described. I do value the expose of the politics around the non-action, even if TFA has other faults.
Mandatory AEB (automatic emergency braking) systems should address it to some degree, albeit only in new cars. There's no reason we shouldn't do both.
There’s a second accident cited where the truck changed lanes suddenly and trapped the car next to them under the trailer and dragged it for quite distance. Then the car caught fire and the driver was burned to death. Sounds like it’s pretty easy to underride if the truck changes lanes or swerved into you. Not a victim that I would blame.
What about the accident where the truck blew through a stop sign at 40mph and the victim was wedged underneath the trailer. I wouldn’t blame that victim either for not avoiding a truck moving at speed outside their line of sight.
What about the person who was rear-ended and propelled under the truck in front of them. Should that victim be blamed for their lack of attentiveness?
Yeah, people can be better drivers, but we also shouldn’t allow known hazards on the road. Even if it costs equipment manufacturers several hundred more dollars
I did. You are cherry picking the accidents where it's quite clear the victim did nothing wrong. There are other accidents described where I find it hard to draw that conclusion. There are only about 4-5 accidents described out of about 400 in 2021 (an undercount per the article).
Have you been on the road? It's very dangerous due to most drivers around you being absolutely awful and inattentive. At least in the USA which is the concern in this article. I swear, not a day goes by where someone either in front or behind me pulls off onto the shoulder to do a heavy braking, surprised that traffic in front is slowing. Whereas truck drivers IME tend to be the most attentive and good drivers. (Of course there are exceptions and the trucks are massive so they have an outsized result.) At least in california. So I'm hard pressed to believe that most of those 400+ annual accidents are the fault of the truck driver.
> we also shouldn’t allow known hazards on the road.
Agreed, and I said as much. Why the NHTSA is not acting on this is beyond my understanding. As well, I noted that I endorse AEB, even though it's a negative for me personally due to 100% false positive events in my own usage. AEB will fix far more hazards than trailer underride guards. Again, that doesn't mean we shouldn't do both.
This is why non-level crossings, armcos, botts dots, LED traffic signals, and so on are all great things. Sure an excellent, courteous and attentive driver doesn't need any of those. It doesn't mean we shouldn't have them, and I said as much re underride guards.
I think you are misreading my comment as victim blaming and reacting to that. That's not what I said.
> I think you are misreading my comment as victim blaming and reacting to that. That's not what I said.
Here's what you said: "This article is intentionally written to sidestep the victim driver's own responsibility. It's hard to underride into a truck if you're driving attentively."
You are directly placing responsibility on the victim for the circumstances that led them to be a victim. The examples given show that the victim driver either had right of way or no control of the circumstances. I don't see how that could possibly NOT be victim blaming.
(And in this case we don't have enough information to know if the driver could have reasonably avoided the crash, anyway.)
>The technology at issue — strong steel guards mounted to the back and sides of trucks — is simple and “relatively inexpensive,” Friedman argued. “The costs are small.”
Talk about a "failed state".
Then again, cars could all come with roll cages and five-point harnesses, and they don't, so there's some limit to safety equipment.
No roll cages historically was the result of no federal safety belt law. Roll cages are great until an un-belted occupant has their head hit the cage. "Second collision." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_impact_(safety)
At this point New Hampshire is the last remaining holdout on state safety belt laws. Live free or die (in a car crash).
Even then, you still have the issue of noncompliance. Automakers don't want to end up on 60 Minutes in an episode about how their "safer car" kills some people, because some of those people were un-belted in a crash. Numbers are all over the place for people not wearing their seat belt, but it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 in 10.
A ton of cars pass Euro-NCAP and IIHS crash and rollover tests with flying colors.
Roll cages were a Thing because, well, this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPF4fBGNK0U
Obviously not every car is up to snuff, especially at the bottom end of the market. You couldn't pay me to drive a current production GM, Ford, Suzuki, Mitsubishi, etc compact sedan.
5-point harnesses aren't really that necessary at 0-60mph speeds in a vehicle with modern airbags; the fifth strap is mostly for anti-submarining but a number of manufacturers have produced seats that are anti-submarining and anti-submarining dashboard design (both material and shape) is a thing as well.
All of it's possible, it's just a lot of car companies are cheap and consumers don't really shop based on stuff like "is there an anti-submarining design to the dash."
But that's clearly not very desirable.
And two really big trucking companies are UPS and FedEx, along with Amazon, too. Walmart, also.
The main bug is using so many square corners road junctions in the US. Those are super dangerous.
The road mentioned in the article has two lanes in each direction and a speed limit of 75mph (120km/h). The major junctions are fully grade-separated, but there are many flat junctions.
$127 for a heavier rear guard and side guard. What about the change in operating costs from the increased weight and aerodynamic losses?
We could limit all drivers to 30 mph everywhere too. Save lives and gas. Think of the children!
Safety regulations are written in blood, lots of it.
https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2022/03/28/how-soaring...
There are 13,000,000+ households in the US which face challenges having enough food, at least once during the year.
https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo...
When you propose a change that makes food less efficient to ship, you increase the number of people who struggle to feed their families — and make the challenge worse for those who already are struggling.
What the person you’re replying to is saying is that you have to balance the benefits (fewer truck crashes) against the costs (more hungry people) — and that such a choice isn’t nearly as simple as shallow histrionics, about how we must spend money to save lives!
I think your shallow false dichotomy, rather than engaging with the fact that economics also costs lives and causes human suffering, is exactly the problem.
Perhaps the trucking companies' position is a negotiating tactic too. I don't see why they should have to pay the entire cost of a solution that benefits society more than themselves; that's what taxes are for.
The EPA uses a value of 7.2 million dollars (2006 dollars) for a life saved [1]:
So if adding guards to trucks would save, say, 50% of the lives lost in underride crashes, that would give you a benefit of 200 * 7.2 million * (inflation adjustment). You'd also want to add in the benefits of reduced non-fatal injuries. But for the purposes of argument, let's imagine the benefits of imposing this regulation are roughly 1 billion dollars a year.
All the costs you're talking about are measurable. It's not that hard to then figure out the costs of imposing the regulation and see whether the benefits outweigh the costs.
And this is one of the simpler cases where there aren't complicating factors like privacy or liberty at stake. You're not requiring truck drivers or trucking companies to change their behaviour. All you're asking them to do is fit a couple of extra pieces of steel to their trailers.
[1] https://www.epa.gov/environmental-economics/mortality-risk-v...
If there's a blindness in this article, it's not so much the trucking industry response as it is the question of whether or not this has been implemented anywhere else in the world? https://www.reifflawfirm.com/canadian-and-european-truck-und... suggests that, "in Europe since 1994, front underride guards and side underride guards have been required on large trucks," and that these were strengthened in 2007.
That same page suggests front and side (of truck) collisions with a passenger vehicle are more likely than rear collisions, and that existing US and Canadian protections aren't strong enough.
[1] https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/2023-04/ANPRM-Si...