Industry Bodies Clash Over Costs and Effectiveness of Truck Underride Guards
🚛 Industry Bodies Clash Over Costs and Effectiveness of Truck Underride Guards.
The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) proposal for side underride guards on newly built large trucks has led to opposing views from prominent industry bodies. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) supports the mandate, claiming that it could save ten times more lives than initially projected by the NHTSA. Conversely, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA) opposes the rule, citing concerns about cost, practicality, and safety issues raised by small-business truckers. Underride guards are installed beneath the sides of truck trailers to prevent smaller vehicles from sliding underneath during accidents. The IIHS argues that the NHTSA's estimates did not consider various types of relevant crashes, leading them to predict that the mandate could prevent up to 217 deaths annually, far more than the NHTSA's projection of 17 fatalities prevented each year.
House lawmakers have passed the Mail Traffic Deaths Reporting Act of 2024, directing the U.S. Postal Service to create new rules for tracking crashes involving its trucking contractors.