Monday, December 29, 2014

TRUCK UNDERRIDE ACCIDENTS: A MAIN HAZARD ON THE HIGHWAY FOR PASSENGER CARS. FEDERAL GOVERNMENT FINALLY PUSHING FOR CHANGE AT A TURTLE'S SPEED



TRUCK UNDERRIDE ACCIDENTS: a main hazard on the highway for passenger cars, federal government finally pushing for change AT A TURTLE'S SPEED



 Over 2,000 dead every year, over 60,000 injured every year form truck accidents.  It is a war zone out there and little is being done to improve thje safety standards, all in the name of cost.  What of course is behind the slow improvement in the safety standards are the lobbbying efforts of the trucking industry.

The main safety issues we are faced today in the highways and roads/streets are the following:



·         Underride (side, rear, front) accidents;

·         Nighttime crushes on unlit roads;

·         Invalid driver’s licenses;

·         Undercounting of single-unit trucks;

·         Vulnerable road users


The following article addresses the underride issue.



A truck “underride” accident happens when a passenger vehicle strikes the rear or side of a tractor-trailer and the passenger vehicle underrides or slides underneath the rear or side of the trailer.  The top or roof of the passenger car is often crushed or removed in an underride accident often resulting in serious injury or death. In addition, there is often intrusion into the passenger compartment of the car. Our truck accident reconstruction experts at Metropolitan Engineering and Forensics have experience in handling tractor-trailer accidents that involve an underride collision.




FRONT UNDERRIDE

·         The majority of fatal large truck accidents involve fronts of trucks

·         70% of passenger vehicle collisions with fronts of single-unit trucks recorded as front underride

SIDE UNDERRIDE

·         Underride accident occurred in about 50% of passenger vehicle collisions with the sides of single-unit trucks (in accidents resulting in death or injury).

REAL UNDERRIDE

·         Underrides occur in 70% or more of collisions between passenger vehicles with the rears of single-unit trucks (in accidents resulting in death or injury).



Under the 1953 rule, underride guards are required on 38.6 percent of straight trucks and 56.9 percent of tractor combinations; if it is assumed that all tractor combinations fall under the 1998 standard, the proportion requiring an underride guard increased to 68.2 percent. Based on a realistic assumption about the distribution of trailer manufacture year, we estimate 63 to 66 percent of tractor combinations in fatal crashes should have underride guards. 


At least some underride occurred in over 63 percent of RES fatal crashes. The proportion was very similar for straight trucks and tractor/trailer combinations: 63.4 percent for straights and 62.7 percent for tractor combinations.

Almost a third of automobiles underrode to the windshield and beyond, compared with about 23 percent of minivans and 15 percent of large pickups.
  


Underride Truck Accidents



Underride accidents are potentially devastating traffic incidents that can cause severe injuries, as a car may drive underneath the bottom of the trailer and become trapped under the 18-wheeler or semi truck.  During these types of truck accidents, the impact of the collision primarily affects the car’s upper frame and windshield, not the front of the vehicle. Considering that virtually all safety features for frontal collisions are focused below the windshield, there are few protections for the motorists involved in these accidents, putting them at risk of serious injuries including brain trauma and spinal cord damage.



Safety Features to Prevent Underride Accidents



There are certain mandatory and optional safety devices that should be used by truck drivers to reduce the possibility of either a rear or side underride accident from occurring. These safety features include the following:



·         Mandatory use of reflective tape across the side and rear of the trailer


·         Mandatory installation of a rear underride guard bar


·         Optional use of lights across the side and rear of the trailer



These features are meant to reduce the likelihood of side underride accidents by increasing truck visibility, which is especially important when trucks are crossing lanes of traffic at night. They also help prevent rear underride accidents by diverting the impact of the collision to the front of the car rather than the windshield thanks to the placement of an underride guard bar.



A passenger vehicle offers little to no protection from a tractor-trailer in a underride collision.  There is a substantial height difference between a tractor-trailer and a standard passenger car. This height difference can cause the passenger vehicle to ride under the rear or side of the tractor-trailer. The passenger car is simply not designed to withstand this type (underride) of collision. Most members of the traveling public are not aware of this significant danger. The trucking industry, on the other hand, has been aware of this danger for years.



The United States Department of Transportation (“DOT”) has promulgated regulations that are intended to prevent underride accidents from happening. Each trailer or semitrailer manufactured after January 26, 1998, with a gross vehicle weight of 10,000 pounds or more, must have an underride guard. 49 CFR § 393.86.  Trailers or semitrailers manufactured before January 26, 1998 must also have rear underride guards, but these guards are subject to less stringent specifications.  Rear underride guards are commonly referred to as ICC (Interstate Commerce Commission) bumpers.  



Generally, there are two types of underride guards: rear guards and side guards. The DOT only requires that trailers have rear underride guards. This is the case even though serious injuries from side underride accidents occur far too often in the highways and other roadways across the United States. Recognizing this danger, many European nations require side underride guards as well as rear underride guards.



Rear underride or impact guards are meant to reduce the possibility of an underride from happening or lessen the damage to a passenger car in a rear impact collision. The DOT defines rear impact guard as follows: a device installed on or near the rear of a vehicle so that when the vehicle is struck from the rear, the device limits the distance that the striking vehicle’s front end slides under the rear of the impacted vehicle. 49 CFR § 571.223. The DOT requires that tractor-trailer underride guards meet certain minimum standards. For instance, the underride guard cannot be more than 22 inches from the ground, the guard must extend to within four inches of the side of the trailer, and the guard must meet certain strength requirements. While these minimum requirements have improved over the years, most safety groups advocate for more stringent requirements, particularly with respect to the strength requirement and height requirement.



Underride accidents or collisions are often not recognized by members of the public as a potential avenue of recovery because these accidents involve rear-end collisions, particularly since the claim is made by an occupant of the vehicle that rear-ended the tractor-trailer.  Often an underride case is pursued when the truck driver acted with due care in operating the tractor-trailer.  The issue is whether the rear underride guard was properly manufactured, designed, installed and maintained and whether the guard caused the injuries claimed.  The manufacturer or owner of the underride guard might argue that the driver of the passenger car was guilty of contributory negligence thereby barring his or her recovery.  However, this argument is generally not available for manufacturer’s to employ against individuals who were merely passengers in the automobile.



Federal and state laws and regulations are in place to help ensure that truck drivers are responsible on our nation’s roads and highways. The rationale behind such laws is clear: Trucks and tractor-trailers greatly overshadow most other passenger vehicles on the roads. In a truck accident, size often does matter, which means that crash victims in cars or smaller motor vehicles may sustain catastrophic or even deadly personal injuries.


A recent study by the National Highway Safety Administration seeks to reduce such injuries. One recommendation called for an update to side and rear underride guard standards. Such guards are intended as a precaution for cars going underneath trucks in the event of a collision. 

Current regulations may be insufficient and outdated, as many of the approximately 500 fatalities resulting from side collisions involve side underride. 



Another preventative approach might be better technology for reducing the blind spot zones on tractor-trailers. As with most vehicles, there are zones on the side and behind a truck or tractor-trailer in which the driver cannot see other vehicles, even with large side mirrors.


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MILWAUKEE (WITI) — A FOX6 investigation has uncovered a real safety concern on the roads, and even through the government knows about it, nothing is being done!

Twenty-three years ago, Brenda Jones was nine months pregnant. Four days before she went into labor, her baby boy’s father was killed in a car accident. His car ran into the back of a truck.


“I raised him as a single parent for half of his life and every day kept saying ‘just let me get him. Let me be okay and keep me here until he`s grown,'” Jones said.

After high school, Jones’ son enrolled at Purdue University. He played on the varsity bowling team.


This spring, he came home from college for a visit.

On the way to see his grandparents, he was killed in a motorcycle crash.

“I never thought he’d be gone too. On my birthday,” Brenda Jones said.

Two months later, Brenda Jones says she had finally stopped crying. That’s when the phone rang.



“It was someone from my husband`s work, asking if my husband was here — they`ve been trying to reach him, they couldn`t reach him,” Brenda Jones remembers.

Jones says she remembers hearing about a crash on the news. She says she just knew.

“I just — I ran to the scene,” Jones said.


Ben Jones was pinned underneath a semi on I-894.

Cameras caught the accident on tape. The video shows the semi moving at a snail’s pace. While other drivers managed to swerve around him, Jones’ husband wasn’t so lucky. His pickup truck slid under the semi. Ben Jones was trapped and unconscious. He was pronounced dead at the scene.


“We just couldn`t keep him long enough to survive the crash,” Jones said.

Witnesses said a special safety bar on the back of the semi had failed, which is how Jones’ pickup truck got lodged underneath.


“I asked and was told that the bar had broken off,” Brenda Jones said.



The bar is called an underride guard, and most semi-trailers are required to have them. The underride guards hang down off the backs of trailers, and they’re supposed to keep cars from sliding underneath a truck during an accident.

However, time and time again, research shows they don’t work. Hundreds of drivers die every year — violent, preventable deaths.

“They had tried to help him at the scene. They had tried, but they couldn`t get to him because he ended up underneath the truck,” Jones said.

No one routinely keeps track of how many people die this way. In 2011, the last time anyone counted, 260 people were found to have died in rear-end underride crashes — two from Wisconsin.


That’s one of the reasons State Patrol Inspector Mark Barlar takes his job so seriously. It’s his job to make sure the bumper is no more than 22 inches off the ground, and the red and white candy stripe is visible. There can be no cracks, and no missing bolts.

However, even Barlar admits the closest inspection might not be enough to keep drivers safe. There’s no way to test the guard to see if it really would hold up in a bad crash.

“There is no way for me to test structural integrity of it. If you could move it by hand that would be a bad thing,” Barlar said.


Even if the bumper meets all the legal requirements, you could still be in danger.

Matt Brumbelow is a senior research engineer for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. This spring, he and his colleagues released a study that concluded the current safety standards are not good enough.



“Roughly 3-5 years ago when we started seeing some of the crash data that made us wonder if something else could be done,” Brumbelow said.

According to their findings, federal laws regulating semi-truck bumpers aren’t cutting it. Their research was based on these crash tests. Even at speeds as slow as 30 miles per hour, the results were deadly. That’s why Canadian guards are required to be twice as strong as the ones traveling on U.S. highways.


“The guard just breaks off the trailer. Canada said ‘these aren’t safe. We’re going to make them safer,'” Brumbelow said.


Since 2011, the IIHS has been petitioning the federal government to make the same change in the United States — to make drivers on our roads safer, but so far, nothing has been done — so some manufacturers have taken safety into their own hands — voluntarily making bumpers stronger.


“You want to put the safest vehicles you can on the road,” Mark Matthiae, the president of Crystal Finishing in Wausau.



After seeing the videos, his company decided they wanted their trucks to have the safest guards out there, so they teamed up with Canadian manufacturer MANAC — which has the strongest bumpers on the market.


“I just don`t understand why the manufacturers wouldn`t want to make that change. It looks to me like very little cost difference. In fact, it could almost be a cost savings if it`s designed properly,” Matthiae said.

It makes sense to Brenda Jones too.


“If it means that maybe somebody can help someone else…it`s too late for us,” Jones said.


Jones is a single mother…for the second time.


“You hear this little voice standing next to you say ‘I can`t go to the father-daughter dance anymore or a little boy is having a meltdown because his dad had promised him fireworks on his first day of kindergarten, and Dad`s not here,” Jones said.

The day before he died, Brenda Jones’ husband put a flagpole in the family’s front yard alongside a bench in memory of their son. It has now become a memorial for both of them.


“He should be here. There’s no reason. They both should be here,” Jones said.

After three years, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has finally agreed to consider tougher standards for underride guards. Nothing is in place yet, but once the new rules take effect, experts say it will still be about 10 more years until all trucks on the road meet the new safety requirements.








Rear underride crashes are easier to address than front or side ones





In this 2002 fatal underride crash, a Chevrolet Impala was hit by another vehicle from behind, lost control and struck the back of a tractor-trailer parked on the shoulder.

A hurried driver looks over his shoulder as he tries to merge onto the freeway, failing to notice traffic stopped ahead of him. He plows his van into the back of a tractor-trailer.

A Chevrolet Prizm slams into the side of a tractor-trailer as it makes a U-turn from the opposite direction at a traffic signal while both vehicles have the green light.


The driver of a logging truck sees a Ford Explorer coming toward him in his lane on a rural, undivided highway. Both vehicles move into the other lane at the last minute and crash head-on.


All of these examples were taken from a federal database of truck crashes, and each resulted in the death of the passenger vehicle driver. In the first, the outcome may well have been different if the truck had been equipped with a stronger rear underride guard such as those already on some trailers. In the second two crashes, which involved the side of one large truck and the front of the other, potential solutions exist, but they aren't as readily available.


Crashes involving the rear of a large truck account for about one-fifth of fatal underride cases, Institute researchers found in 1997. Another fifth are side crashes, while the majority are frontal ones. Unlike front and side underride, rear underride fatalities are often preventable, and there is a framework in place to address the problem.


"We already have a regulation on rear underride guards, so we should make sure that regulation is effective," says Matthew Brumbelow, an IIHS senior research engineer.

Still, with so many underride crashes involving the fronts and sides of large trucks, should guards surround trucks completely?


In side crashes, underride guards have the potential to save lives. An IIHS analysis of crashes in which passenger vehicles hit the side of large trucks found that out of 143 crashes in which the truck side impact produced the most severe injury, more than half would not have been as severe if there had been side underride guards on the truck.

For side guards to work, several hurdles would have to be overcome. For one thing, many trailers have sliding axles that can be adjusted depending on the load, making it difficult to position a side guard so that it won't interfere with the wheels. In addition, side guards that are strong enough to prevent underride would add a lot of extra mass to a trailer — much more than a rear guard, which doesn't have to cover as big an area — and in the trucking industry, any additional pounds can affect the bottom line.


The European Union requires side guards, but they are intended to protect only pedestrians and bicyclists. Because of this, they are much weaker and lighter than they would need to be to protect people in passenger vehicles.


Front underride guards, which are required in the EU to protect vehicle occupants in crashes with combined speeds of about 35 mph, also might prevent some deaths. An earlier Institute study of fatal truck crashes in Indiana found that 9 out of 44 front underride crashes might have been survivable in the absence of underride (see "FARS undercounts fatal large truck-car underride crashes," Feb. 15, 1997).


However, in most of the crashes studied, front underride guards would not have changed the outcome. In crashes involving a passenger vehicle and the front of a large truck, the truck is typically moving toward the other vehicle. The enormous difference in mass between a tractor-trailer and a car, SUV or pickup means that there is a high probability such a crash will be fatal at even moderate speeds, underride or no underride.

___________________________________________________________________


More than 350 people a year are killed when a car strikes the back of a big truck and slides underneath. There are safety standards to prevent these so-called truck underride accidents, but a new study shows the protections aren't working. 



Rear impact guards, fastened to the backs of big rigs, are designed to stop cars and prevent them from sliding underneath. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) put them to the test. The Institute crashed a 2010 Chevy Malibu, traveling 35 miles an hour, into the back of parked trailers. The rear guard that meets the U.S. standard gave way, and the car slid right under the trailer, crushing the vehicle. If there had been real occupants instead of crash dummies in the front seat, the IIHS said they would not have survived. 



"Our tests show how easily some of these guards are failing at relatively moderate speeds," said institute president Adrian Lund. "The standards need to be stronger. These crashes don't have to be deaths or serious injuries." 



Canada requires rear impact barriers that are 75 percent stronger than those in the U.S. In the IIHS crash tests, the Canadian-style guard held up properly when the car hit it.


For Nancy Meuleners, a rear under-ride crash has meant 40 surgeries and a changed life -- she lost her jaw and parts of her tongue. 



"Speaking can be an issue. Eating. I can't eat normal foods," Meulener said.


Meuleners, of Bloomington Minnesota, has lobbied to get stronger rear guards, "We need lower, safer, more energy-absorbing guards," she said. She is understandably nervous when driving near a big rig. "They are a danger to me and to the American public, I feel, without proper underride bars on them." 



"It doesn't provide the kind of underguard protection that clearly is called for," said Bill Graves, president of the American Trucking Associations, after being shown the test video. 



Big Rig Threat: Cars Slide Under Trailers



Graves said, though, that there the right barrier design is a "complicated puzzle to solve."


"That's the question the federal government has been wrestling now for many years, is what's the strength we want," he said." What's too much? And what's not enough?"


The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued a statement today saying "it is well aware of the scope and severity of the truck underride issue." 



The agency, part of the Department of Transportation, said it first identified problems in 2009 and has been studying the issue ever since. It said it hopes to finish its review next year. 



"The driving public should know," said the statement from agency head David Strickland, "that we are already actively working to address the issues."


One big question: how long will that take? The last time the government raised rear underride standards, it took 20 years.