An underride guard bill proposed at the end of last year is getting new life in the Senate. The bi-partisan bill would revamp underride guard requirements for all tractor trailers.
Introduced by Senators Kristen Gillibrand and Marco Rubio last December, the “Stop Underrides Act of 2017” aims to prevent traffic deaths caused when cars are pushed under a trailer during an accident, usually causing catastrophic damage to both the vehicle and its occupants.
The bill would update existing rear underride guards, mandate underride guards on the sides of trailers and also require truck inspections to include a review of the guards.
The American Trucking Association, the Truck Trailer Manufacturers Association, and the Owner Operator Independent Drivers Association have come out against the bill.
According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, 301 people died in side underride crashes alone in 2015. The IIHS released a report last year which found that even if a car was travelling at only 35 mph, a collision with the side of a trailer would likely shear off the top of the car, causing fatal injuries to the driver. But with side guards, the severity of the crash would be reduced significantly.
While standing with the family of a man who died due to an underride crash, Sen. Chuck Schumer endorsed the bill.
“The death that occurred here did not have to occur,” said Schumer. “Underride guards are not expensive. They are easy and they will protect us from these kinds of crashes.”
Source: gobytrucknews, wkbw, wbfo, buffalonews, spectrumlocalnews, truckersreport
This just in, Swift Trailers becoming high-centered across the country after the implementation of these devices.
Jokes aside, lowboy trailers have special routing to avoid taller railroad crossings and other road terrain obstacles, now the average Joe trucker will need to add those to their trip planning.
Instead we need to educate the common motorist on the dangers of semi trucks. From many people I’ve talked to, as well as my own education, there isn’t any in depth training on how to behave around tractor trailers. This, combined with the exponentially increased driving distractions, leads to a very bad tasting concoction.
Exactly correct
You cannot educate stupidity. How do you educate people to stop running into the sides of trains?
They fail to reproduce.
Where in the hell is personal responsibility? WTF.
I ask the same thing!
Ya gotta love Rubio! Little Marco comes up with some of the craziest stuff to endorse. Thank God he didn’t make it out of the presidential debates. Why should trucking companies and owner operators have to shoulder the cost because 4-wheelers can’t drive to prevent those 4-wheelers from killing themselves. I’ve never heard of a trailer sliding sideways into a car. What’s next? Training wheels on trucks to prevent rollovers? Not expensive? Ok…so I guess the government is going to pick up the tab of the modifications and not raise anyone’s taxes or fees, right? Hehe…yeah, RIGHT!
That’ll be good long as the company gets charge for not having it and not the driver then again Martin transportation Service charge if you blew a tire so They charge you for that two
Ok so let’s say a vehicle is “pushed under” as they mentioned in this article.
Who’s pushing?
If a vehicle is T-Boned into a trailer with these magical underride roll bars for idiots, It seems to me that said squishee will now be completely squished vertically flat instead of being “pushed” under.
Because 50,000 lbs of trailer or 80,000 lbs of semi ain’t going to move for the pusher or pushee.
So instead is getting a crew cut now you get pancakes… DEAD either way.
Politicians are imbeciles, as are most people today.
Hardly anybody thinks past their noses anymore.
HOS rules haven’t improved safety or our life on the road because carriers, dispatchers, and customer companies still do NOT account for your time wasted at shippers & receivers where we are SUPPOSED to be Off-Duty / Sleeping but still have to wait for check-in, door assignments, trailer jockeying, getting knocked out of bed by forklifts, waiting for signed bills, paying lumpers, checking out at the guard shack, then not having your next load even scheduled, waiting for that, needing a shower, bathroom, meal, etc… all that time uses up your “10 hour break” before you actually have time for yourself. Oh and that’s when your next load chimes in with a pick up time and fine if your late, which your dispatcher doesn’t account for the truck and reefer needing fuel time too, so they pretty much guarantee that you will be late and it’s as always the driver’s fault.
No Way Folks! Nothing these bozos come up with actually works in real life.
All of these Truck Safety ideas only cause the industry more money and grief that the driver’s should be getting paid for but aren’t because the carriers complain of all their operational overhead.
The rich keep getting richer and we keep getting shafted by our employers and killed by the road-raging public… yes another driver was shot in the head while driving down the road.
Gee, I wonder if under-ride protection would have helped him and anyone else involved in the consequential crash.
Maybe teach drivers to keep their eyes open & on the road when driving! We can’t do all the protecting for the 4wheelers!!
Well you are spot-on with everything in your comment completely agree.
I am so sick of the federal government coming down on the trucking industry because of this stupid jerks driving cars around us everyday. Every one of their idiotic regulations has backfired, look at the recent ELD law. What a freaking joke now you have people racing up and down the highway trying to beat the clock and we have increased the accidents…… And added tools for the carrier or broker to harass the driver over how many hours they have or don’t have and push them into working when they should be resting!!
What all on driver again! Where is personal responsibility!!!!!!!
Stop trying to be To fast and stupid furious.
Just that much less cargo and more road damage.
How are logging trucks and the like going to manage not tearing off those skirts out in the woods?
Like ELD’s, about half of the trucking industries will ask for exemptions and the government in there infinite wisdom will grant them.
Do you think underside guards will curtail stupidity?
No, but I’ll bet they save a lot of lives. Just like the rear ‘Mansfield’ bumper. (For you younger drivers, you refer tot he Mansfield bumper as a DOT bumper.)
They won’t hang as low as the bottom of a low boy. They’ll be the same height as the rear DOT bumper.
Yes drivers will need to be mind full passing over some railroad grades, but you don’t see stick haulers getting stuck, and their clearance is 15 inches. Thats about the same clearance of your landing gear. The proposed side guards will have more clearance than most trailer skirts.
Will it lessen cargo carrying capacity? Yes. But it will likely lower insurance costs a bit.
You are not accepting the fact that the landing gear and rear bumper are at the front and rear of trailer. The side guard are in the middle so the clearance for the side guards , bumper and landing gear can have the same clearance but when going over a rail road or something like that will change and be different and the truck moves over it. Pretty much if you broke the landing gear going over a track then the side skirts had no chance bit you can clear the landing gear and still catch the skirts. Seen it so many times thanks to Swift and Warner lol
Why not make the car owners install a device to alert the driver when he’s about to do something really, really stupid??? BEEP BEEP BEEP Truck!!!! BRAAAAKE. How do you not see a freaking semi turned sideways in front of you. Talk about distracted driving.
Put roll cages in all new cars. That’s answer to every wreck not just side of semi
Oh, but then my shiny new Toyor a Testicle won’t look cool and impress the chicks!
These skirts were not designed for prevent accidents, they were added to trailers for air flow and wind drag on trailers, if anyone will actually get under the trailer and look they were fashioned to direct air back towards the brakes and rear of the trailer, I honestly think that the transportation dept better rethink this issue, because whoever manufactured these are misleading companies into believing they were built to help prevent accidents, sorry boys but they pulled the wool over your eyes,
I don’t know anyone that thinks trailer skirts were designed to prevent accidents anyone in the business knows they are strictly a aerodynamic, fuel economy Improvement device….. Duh!
Well take your own money and make driving safely around CMV’s part of the curriculum for getting a DL. It’s very obvious to me as a driver 90+% of the public have no idea how many feet a truck needs to stop safely. They think when we keep space open between us and the car in front we are opening it just for them. So weaving in and out of traffic. And cutting off trucks is plainly unsafe. Or inform them that left lane vehicals have the right of way not cars merging from an on ramp. I have seen things commuters do that would chill you to the bone. Everyday people risking my life and their own to make a 30 min ride home from work into a 29 min ride home. Education is the only way
What curriculum? Driver’s Ed is too expensive, and the liability risk is too great, so it is hardly ever taught in high school, any more. Pennsylvania stopped printing their permit test prep booklet – now you have to download it as a pdf file. We give them a short multiple choice test, which they can take as many times as they have to, to pass, and we ask them questions about the maximum weight of vehicle that they are allowed to drive. When they take the road test, the testing official just wants to get back to the coffee machine and bathroom with all of his appendages intact, his coffee unspilled, and before he has to pee.
What curriculum?
Completely agree. The private motorist is by far the largest SAFETY threat in the road. Statistics prove this time and time again.
There needs to be programs aimed at the cause of the far majority of accidents …. PRIVATE VEHICLES !!!
Van trailers are a remarkable teaching venue that doesn’t seem to get used as it could. I’m thinking rolling billboards with messages and pictures to educate Johnny Hotrod about what could happen if he gets in the wrong place at the wrong time with a rig.
Once again, another regulation put upon the shoulders of the trucking industry, that’s supposed to protect 4- wheelers from themselves. If this is needed then how do you explain the hundreds of millions of people who haven’t run 🏃♀️ not the sides or backs of trucks???
This is the most important issue in trucking… really? This is what we’Re spend time and money on? Not fair wages, or Hours of Service, or ELDs, or any of the myriad of other, more significant causes of traffic deaths?
I don’t know that statistics are kept on this, but how many fatalities are caused each year by wild animals on the road? I’m thinking that it’s probably a bigger number… so let’s pass a law prohibiting deer from crossing the road except at crosswalks… Don’t more pedestrians than this get killed crossing the street? Let’s install automatic braking devices in all cars, to force them to stop at every crosswalk, if radar detects a possible pedestrian crossing against the light…
You can’t safety-device stupidity away. And trailer skirts are not, and never were, a safety device. Wedging your car under a truck is a bad idea, with or without skirts. The rear tandems are the most likely thing to kill you… perhaps we should ship exclusively by air, to avoid cars getting into truck accidents, at all?
being a four wheeler, I gotta agree with you folks on this. aren’t there better causes to champion than this one? ridiculous waste of time and money. if someone drowns in a pool, you don’t drain the pool. you teach people how to swim.
Just another way to tax the public and make themselves look important.
If the company drivers would side whit the o/o an stop driving we would win and they would not loose their job
Why do trucks constantly have to “correct” for everyone else’s bad behavior ??
It’s a truck!!…., respect that when you drive around one and you will be in far better shape!
Ignoramus car drivers!!
These side protection rails have been in use in Europe for many years and have
been proven to save lives.