Thread by @propublica

Underride crashes — when a passenger vehicle collides with a semi truck & slides beneath it — kill hundreds of Americans a year.
A ProPublica/FRONTLINE investigation reveals how safety regulators repeatedly failed to collect accurate data or take action to protect passengers. 🧵

2/ Concerns about underride crashes are not new.

In 1967, Hollywood star Jayne Mansfield was killed when the Buick she was riding in collided into the rear of a semi truck, crushing the top portion of the car.
propublica.org/article/underr…

3/ At the time, large trucks were required to have rear guards meant to prevent these kinds of crashes, but standards were lax and many guards were made of low-grade metal that had a tendency to collapse when hit. propublica.org/article/underr…

4/ Within 2 years, the Dept. of Transportation had proposed new standards for rear guards that would be larger and stronger...

The trucking industry did not welcome this news.

5/ In a 1970 letter to the @USDOT, the American Trucking Associations complained about “the unfairness of inflicting upon the industry the heavy cost penalty which would be brought about by the incorporation of a guard of the proposed type.”

6/ The Truck Trailer Manufacturers Association, a lobbying outfit representing semi-trailer builders, argued it would be “far more practical” to force Volkswagen and other companies making compact cars to produce larger vehicles that were less likely to slip beneath a truck.

7/ After pressure from industry lobbyists, the DOT scuttled the proposal because the safety benefits "would not be commensurate with the costs of implementing the proposed requirements.”

8/ This cycle of safety regulators giving up after opposition from industry interests would repeat itself in the decades that followed.

Days before Ronald Reagan's 1981 inauguration, @NHTSAgov proposed a new rule for stronger rear guards that would only cost ~$50/vehicle...

9/ But the ATA and other industry lobbyists countered that the price would actually be $127/trailer and that the guards wouldn't save enough lives to justify the additional expense.

10/ Between industry pushback and the new Reagan administration's anti-regulation stance, rulemaking at NHTSA “came to a halt,” recalls Lou Lombardo, a physicist who was at the agency at the time. “We had nothing, nothing, nothing to do.”

11/ Asked if people died as a result of the agency’s failure to act on rear underride crashes, Lombardo had an instant reply: “Oh heck yes.”

12/ It wasn't until 1998 that a new federal standard for rear guards took effect, but it too was fraught with problems.

First, the regulation only applied to newly built semi-trailers. Older models with inadequate guards were grandfathered in.

13/ Second, NHTSA hadn't done enough testing in real-world conditions.

Time and again, the new guards failed, resulting in the severe underride crashes they were intended to prevent.

14/ Matt Brumbelow at @IIHS_autosafety — the place that crashes vehicles into stuff in the name of science — noticed this pattern.

By 2010, his team was crashing cars into trailers equipped with the new guards.

The results were dismal:

15/ Brumbelow's team also tested trailers equipped with stronger guards than the U.S. standard.

These guards fared better at stopping the oncoming vehicle:

16/ In the wake of the IIHS tests, many trailer companies voluntarily began building stronger guards. It would still be years before U.S. regulators acted.

17/ Underride crashes don't just happen at the rear of the truck.

Cars that collide with a semi-truck at an angle will get under the trailer's side where there are no federal standards for guards.

Not for lack of trying...

18/ Just like with the rear guards, regulators initially pushed for side guards on large trucks in the late 1960s, but quietly dropped the idea.

In 1991, NHTSA revisited the concept before deciding it was too costly. A more recent analysis, from 2023, came to the same conclusion

19/ Some truck manufacturers have claimed side guards would also add too much weight to trucks already burdened with cargo & that they'd actually make trucks more dangerous. However, a number of engineers have shown that effective, safe guards can be made for an affordable price.

20/ In arguing against stronger or additional guards, trucking industry lobbyists have repeatedly claimed that there either isn't enough data on fatalities or that the data shows not many lives would be saved.

21/ According to an analysis of NHTSA data, more than 400 people died in underride crashes in 2021.

But the true death toll is likely far higher.

22/ Part of the problem is that NHTSA relies on local & state police to investigate collisions and document their findings.

Those reports are sent to NHTSA and compiled into a single, mammoth database, cataloging tens of thousands of incidents every year.

23/ However, NHTSA has never required first responders to track underride crashes & has offered little training to police on the issue.

"Only 17 states have a field on their police accident reports to indicate if an underride occurred," says Harry Adler of @_SaferTrucking .

24/ A 2019 GAO report concluded that underride “fatalities are likely underreported,” and urged NHTSA to do a better job of educating police officers and other law enforcement personnel about the crashes.
propublica.org/article/underr…

25/ In 2022, more than a decade after Brumbelow began his crash tests, NHTSA updated its rules.

Even then, the agency acted only after the passage of a federal law directing it to do so.

26/ NHTSA officials & @SecretaryPete declined to be interviewed by ProPublica & @frontlinepbs.

NHTSA did not respond to written questions from the news organizations, including about why the agency had moved so slowly to address the lethal hazards posed by underride collisions.

27/ In a statement, NHTSA defended its record. “Safety is the top priority for the U.S. Department of Transportation and NHTSA,” the agency said.

28/ Dan Horvath, the ATA’s vice president for safety policy, said he has little information about the organization’s past positions, but he acknowledges that costs were “a very real factor” for the industry.

29/ He says the industry spends billions on safety each year. His organization still opposes any mandates for side guards.

30/ Read the ProPublica & @frontlinepbs investigation from @ACInvestigates @KartikayM @juliaingram_ here:

propublica.org/article/underr…

31/ And watch the full @frontlinepbs @propublica documentary, "America's Dangerous Trucks," premiering tonight at 10pm ET on @PBS
pbs.org/wgbh/frontline…