Most large commercial trucks and tractor-trailers today are required to be equipped with underride guards. If you have ever been driving behind a large tractor-trailer, you may have noticed a steel bar fastened just below the bottom edge on the back of the trailer. These devices are mandated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to prevent passenger vehicles from underriding a big rig in a collision. However, most guards on the roadways today are grossly inadequate and as a result, preventable injuries and deaths to motorists are all too common.
Truck Underride Crashes
Collisions between passenger vehicles and large tractor-trailers are always bad accidents. When, however, a passenger vehicle actually travels under a large truck or tractor-trailer during a collision, the likelihood of significant injuries and death increases dramatically. For that reason, NHTSA implemented specific requirements regarding underride guards to protect against these types of accidents.
In 1998, NHTSA created two standards requiring certain large trucks be equipped with a steel guard on the rear of the truck to prevent smaller vehicles from traveling under the rigs in a collision. While the requirements were a good step in the right direction, the guards are too weak to adequately mitigate underride crashes resulting in the same injuries and deaths the guards were intended to prevent. Additionally, the standards exempt many types of heavy trucks so that a majority of trucks on the roadways do not have to adhere to NHTSA’s requirements. Unfortunately, even with NHTSA’s standards, we are only marginally safer today on the roadway than we were before NHTSA adopted underride guard standards.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has been on top of the underride issue since the mid-1970s. The IIHS has determined that even with the safety standards applicable to underride guards, the guards are still failing for the following three reasons:
- The attachments between the guard and the trailer are too weak;
- Weakness at the end of the main horizontal beam of the guard allows the ends to bend forward or shear off completely; and
- The trailer chassis buckles causing the guard to rotate up and forward.
Each of these failure mechanisms allows some part of the passenger vehicle to travel underneath the large truck without engaging the “crush zones” of the vehicles. By design, passenger vehicles incorporate “crush zones” to absorb the energy when the vehicle is involved in a crash. When the vehicle absorbs the energy from a crash, the occupants of the vehicle are less likely to be severely or fatally injured. When a passenger vehicle underrides a large truck, the “crush zones” are rarely engaged. The contact between the truck and the passenger vehicle is almost always beginning and the windshield and continues rearward into the passenger compartment of the vehicle. As a result, the injuries associated with this type of collision are often fatal for the passengers in the area of contact.
While groups such as IIHS, among others, are actively petitioning NHTSA to revise its underride standards increasing the strength requirements as well as the positioning of the vertical beams, NHTSA has not yet made any commitment to consider any revisions to the underride standards. Unfortunately, this means that underride remains a roadways hazard unlikely to change for the foreseeable future.
Written by*:
Shalimar S. Wallis
WATTS GUERRA LLP
4 Dominion Drive, Bldg. 3, Suite 100
San Antonio, Texas 78257
Phone: (210) 447-0500
Email: swallis@guerrallp.com
*This information is provided to supply information relating to truck underride crashes, and should not be received as legal advice. Legal advice is only given to persons or entities with whom Watts Guerra LLP has established an attorney-client relationship. If you have a lawyer, you should consult with your own attorney, and rely upon his or her advice, rather than the information contained herein.
© Watts Guerra LLP 2015
