Photo: Government Accountability Office
Washington — Legislation recently introduced in both the House and Senate would require underride guards on the sides of new trucks in an effort to “improve motor carrier, passenger motor vehicle and vulnerable road user safety.”
The Stop Underrides Act 2.0 (S. 3775 and H.R. 7354) was announced Feb. 4 by Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) and Reps. Steve Cohen (D-TN), Mark DeSaulnier (D-CA) and Deborah Ross (D-NC).
In a press release, DeSaulnier says that at least 300 people die each year in underride crashes, which occur when passenger vehicles strike and slide under large trucks. Federal law requires underride guards on the rear of trucks.
The legislation would direct the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to finalize rulemaking requiring new commercial trucks be equipped with side underride guards able to “prevent intrusion” for vehicle impact speeds of up to 40 mph.
Other provisions of the bill would:
- Reconvene the Department of Transportation’s Advisory Committee on Underride Protection to provide recommendations for ways to reduce underride crashes and their resulting injuries and deaths.
- Require DOT to publish a website making underrides research accessible to researchers, industry and advocates.
- Instruct the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to conduct a study on the frequency of underride incidents, including those involving the fronts of large trucks.
- Instruct the Government Accountability Office to study the implementation of a 2022 rule requiring the rear of trucks to be equipped with underride guards and offer suggestions for improvement.
- Instruct NHTSA to review its Fatality Analysis Reporting System and correct crashes in the database that should have been classified as an underride but weren’t.
- Instruct NHTSA to create free, on-demand web-based training for state and local law enforcement to better identify and document underride crashes.
“Requiring trucks to have underride guards is a simple way to prevent hundreds of deaths on our roads,” Ross said in a press release. “These guards are a proven, effective safety measure that will reduce underride crashes as well as severe injuries and fatalities caused by underrides.”
Numerous industry and worker groups back the bill, including the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, Institute for Safer Trucking, Truck Safety Coalition, and International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
“The Stop Underrides Act 2.0 would help stop devastating underride crashes by advancing research-backed protections which are long overdue,” AHAS President Cathy Chase said in the release. “We urge Congress to advance this bill without delay to prevent more people from being horrifically killed or injured in an underride crash.”
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Original article published by Safety+Health an NSC publication