[HN Gopher] Trapped Under Trucks
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Trapped Under Trucks
Author : danso
Score : 70 points
Date : 2023-06-14 20:25 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.propublica.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.propublica.org)
| miguelazo wrote:
| >According to NHTSA's latest figures, more than 400 people died
| in underride crashes in 2021, the most recent year for which data
| is available. But experts say the true number of deaths is likely
| higher.
|
| >The technology at issue -- strong steel guards mounted to the
| back and sides of trucks -- is simple and "relatively
| inexpensive," Friedman argued. "The costs are small."
|
| Talk about a "failed state".
| local_crmdgeon wrote:
| Failed state is when no underguards
| masklinn wrote:
| It's rather when the industry can keep fighting for 50 years
| to save pennies over lives, and faces no punishment for it.
| bombcar wrote:
| You'd think some of the trucking companies would do it just
| for publicity, if it was cheap enough.
|
| Then again, cars could all come with roll cages and five-
| point harnesses, and they don't, so there's some limit to
| safety equipment.
| MrFoof wrote:
| _> Then again, cars could all come with roll cages and
| five-point harnesses, and they don't, so there's some
| limit to safety equipment._
|
| No roll cages historically was the result of no federal
| safety belt law. Roll cages are great until an un-belted
| occupant has their head hit the cage. "Second collision."
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_impact_(safety)
|
| At this point New Hampshire is the last remaining holdout
| on state safety belt laws. Live free or die _(in a car
| crash)_.
|
| Even then, you still have the issue of noncompliance.
| Automakers don't want to end up on 60 Minutes in an
| episode about how their "safer car" kills some people,
| because some of those people were un-belted in a crash.
| Numbers are all over the place for people not wearing
| their seat belt, but it's somewhere in the neighborhood
| of 1 in 10.
| renewiltord wrote:
| What exactly do you do with the publicity? You're a B2B
| company. I've never heard of someone calling up Safeway
| and asking if they use SafeGuards Trucking over
| RideHighOrDie Trucking. Literally zero incentive.
| bombcar wrote:
| B2B companies have customers.
|
| And two really big trucking companies are UPS and FedEx,
| along with Amazon, too. Walmart, also.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Most modern passenger car passenger cells don't need roll
| cages because their passenger safety cells are properly
| engineered, and because crash safety is much more
| comprehensive, with wheels and suspension components
| designed to intentionally fail and crumple in a crash so
| they aren't pushed into the passenger cell.
|
| A ton of cars pass Euro-NCAP and IIHS crash and rollover
| tests with flying colors.
|
| Roll cages were a Thing because, well, this:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPF4fBGNK0U
|
| Obviously not every car is up to snuff, especially at the
| bottom end of the market. You couldn't pay me to drive a
| current production GM, Ford, Suzuki, Mitsubishi, etc
| compact sedan.
|
| 5-point harnesses aren't really that necessary at 0-60mph
| speeds in a vehicle with modern airbags; the fifth strap
| is mostly for anti-submarining but a number of
| manufacturers have produced seats that are anti-
| submarining and anti-submarining dashboard design (both
| material and shape) is a thing as well.
|
| All of it's possible, it's just a lot of car companies
| are cheap and consumers don't really shop based on stuff
| like "is there an anti-submarining design to the dash."
| bombcar wrote:
| A well-built roll cage should prevent the very issue that
| is under discussion here (it should shove the truck up or
| the car down, not decapitate the driver).
|
| But that's clearly not very desirable.
| JimtheCoder wrote:
| I have always wondered why those trailers with the super low
| floors are not more popular...
|
| They look to be more aerodynamic, they can hold more stuff, and
| they would prevent the problems presented in the article.
|
| Maybe does it have to do with the fact that loading docks are
| already high, and this would make the loading process more
| cumbersome? I am not sure...
| PrivateButts wrote:
| Not a trucker, but I believe it's because trailers with lower
| ground clearance will bottom out if you aren't careful with
| your route planning. Things like rail crossing with aggressive
| approach and departure angles would be pretty risky with a low
| to the ground trailer.
| thedrbrian wrote:
| the other problem is tyres. we use super singles on our trucks
| and the tractors, trailers and rigids have the same size tyre.
|
| 385/65 R22.5
|
| to have a flat floor on the trailer with the smaller tyres
| you've now got to stock another size of tyre or run dual tyres
| on the trailer.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's the loading dock.
|
| The vast _vast_ majority of trucks are not filled to the brim
| (and even if they 're at their weight limit, they often have
| "air" in the box).
|
| "Lowboys" are mainly used for large construction equipment
| where they need the extra height.
|
| A semi-trailer is a surprisingly cheap piece of equipment.
|
| Some trucks that are special purpose use the lower areas (see
| https://www.mayflower.com for an example; household movers have
| more weight capacity than space).
| ethagknight wrote:
| >>It was a little after 7 p.m. and Ricardo Marcos was rolling
| through the darkness in his gray Hyundai Elantra. Marcos had
| spent a long day toiling as a mechanic at a trucking company in
| McAllen, Texas, a sunbaked city nestled right on the U.S.-Mexico
| border.
|
| Reading the opening story, it sounds like he fell asleep or
| wasn't paying attention. We will never know, but it's very sad no
| matter. It's also true, assuming he fell asleep, he could have
| killed others, as happened to Rod Bramblett and his wife, radio
| announcer for the Auburn Tigers, who was killed at a stoplight
| when rear ended by a driver who fell asleep while driving at a
| high rate of speed. Another sad story.
|
| Hitting an 80,000lb mass in any configuration at high speed is
| going to be nasty no matter what. One option is to ask truckers
| to provide heavy bumpers and crumple zones and airbags around
| their trucks. The other option is to operate your vehicle safely,
| reducing speed if visibility is limited, etc.
|
| I dont doubt that rear bumpers being stronger would be a good
| start, but by the same token, the starting assumption of a car
| rear ending a very large object at 60mph head-on does not seem
| like a scenario to weigh too heavily in the grand scheme.
|
| However, maybe there is a compromise of better rear guards and
| 20% additional side coverage by guards? i.e. dont make perfect
| the enemy of good.
| mistercheph wrote:
| The purpose of the NHTSA and vehicle safety regulations broadly
| is not to litigate who is at fault in an accident and sentence
| them to death, it is to make traveling on the road by motor
| vehicle or bicycle or foot as safe as is feasible given costs
| and available technology and data about the nature of injuries
| in collisions. Most people most of the time are in control of
| their vehicles and are paying attention to the road. But every
| single person that drives a car will make a mistake, become
| distracted, suffer a mechanical failure, or become unavoidably
| implicated in the mistake of another road user.
|
| Slamming into the back or coming through the side of a semi-
| trailer is not something that just happens to "dangerous
| drivers". It is something that can happen to anyone placed in
| the wrong place at the wrong time.
|
| That said, the position of the regulators and trucking industry
| at present make sense, underride crash data indicates that the
| costs of proposed safety measures could be better spent
| improving other known road-safety issues with known or
| projected solutions. And the point that TFA is making is that
| NHTSA data is severely underreporting underride crash incidents
| in the sample that they investigated, making underride crash
| safety regulations worthwhile.
|
| And the mass of the vehicle is really not the issue in this
| sort of collision. This type of collision would occur in the
| same exact way if the trailers weighed 1,000 lbs, the bottom of
| the trailer would shred through the windshield and decapitate
| the occupants. A better underride guard would turn an unknown
| number of fatal accidents into scary crashes that people walk
| away from unharmed.
| hobobaggins wrote:
| > Slamming into the back or coming through the side of a
| semi-trailer is not something that just happens to "dangerous
| drivers". It is something that can happen to anyone placed in
| the wrong place at the wrong time.
|
| It's certainly an avoidable mistake, especially on an open
| highway where the trailer was 'edging slowly' out into
| traffic. Failing to avoid it results in danger. The article
| doesn't even mention extenuating circumstances such as a
| blind turn or something, but even if that were the case, the
| situation would simply require extra caution to successfully
| navigate the dangerous area.
|
| "Dangerous" doesn't have to mean intentionally so or that the
| driver was reckless; the danger could simply be in lacking
| the experience to recognize the danger that exists.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| This article is intentionally written to sidestep the victim
| driver's own responsibility. It's hard to underride into a truck
| if you're driving attentively.
|
| That's not to say they are wrong, if the fix is as simple and as
| cheap as described. I do value the expose of the politics around
| the non-action, even if TFA has other faults.
|
| Mandatory AEB (automatic emergency braking) systems should
| address it to some degree, albeit only in new cars. There's no
| reason we shouldn't do both.
| mastazi wrote:
| > Year after year, federal officials at the National Highway
| Traffic Safety Administration, the country's primary roadway
| safety agency, ignored credible scientific research and failed to
| take simple steps to limit the hazards of underride crashes.
|
| NHTSA officials don't have time to do that of course, they are
| too busy denying right to repair in order to "protect" motorists
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=2nXVljRUnoc
|
| As an external observer (I don't live in the USA) it seems to me
| that the NHTSA is captured by lobbyists, as a result it is
| currently only there to protect the interests of auto makers,
| instead of protecting traffic safety. Why is this illegal
| behaviour not investigated?
| mhb wrote:
| If the absurd increase in the heights of the fronts of cars
| continues - problem solved.
| cracrecry wrote:
| As a European I see this kind of accident as a non issue because
| we use roundabouts. It is only important in the back of the
| truck.
|
| The main bug is using so many square corners road junctions in
| the US. Those are super dangerous.
| [deleted]
| JoeyBananas wrote:
| new Metallica song?
| berbec wrote:
| dying to live!
| Schnitz wrote:
| Europe has mandatory underride guards for this reason since 20+
| years ago.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| 27 years ago in the US:
|
| https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2004/11/05/04-2473...
|
| ...and then updated two years later.
|
| Still watered down to the point of near uselessness in order to
| placate the trucking industry lobbyists.
| Archelaos wrote:
| 50 years in Germany: A rear underride guard was made mandatory
| in Germany by a 1973 law for vehicles registered on or after 1
| January 1975 with a carriage height of 55 cm or more above
| ground.
|
| Source:
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unterfahrschutz_(Nutzfahrzeug)...
| (in German)
| RandallBrown wrote:
| The US has them, but I think it's only on the rear of the
| trailer. A quick image search shows guards on the sides of
| European trailers, which would have been helpful in the crash
| from the article.
| jmclnx wrote:
| >An investigator with the local police department blamed the
| collision on the truck driver, who was initially charged with
| negligent homicide, though charges were eventually dropped
|
| I wonder why.
|
| Another issue is the size of trucks. The state where I lived:
|
| * Truck size was limited, large trucks were only allowed on one
| Highway. Goods were transferred to smaller Trucks for transport
| to factories.
|
| * Driving trucks on Sundays was not allowed.
|
| * Large Trucks were not allowed on City Streets. Since this
| happened it is open season on bicycle riders.
|
| Reagan de-regulated and Trucks can be any size, plus they can
| clog the roads on Sunday. The last item I do not know when it was
| enabled, but it happened after Reagan.
|
| I now heard of trucks with 3 trailers but never saw one. I think
| it is about time we limit sizes to what existed on the 60s. If
| you need 3 trailers, time to go back to freight trains.
| briffle wrote:
| > I now heard of trucks with 3 trailers but never saw one.
|
| In Oregon, they are only allowed on I-5 between Eugene and
| Portland, must be less than 105 feet total, and not allowed at
| night, weekends, holidays, etc.
|
| They use shorter trailers.. but man, that last trailer is doing
| lots of swaying back and forth..
| jffry wrote:
| How is prohibiting truck transport on Sunday good for other
| road users? You'd be eliminating 14% of hours in the week,
| which means a corresponding higher density of trucks on non-
| Sunday days
| gambiting wrote:
| Coming from countries where truck transport is not allowed on
| Sundays - it's great. Means that if you're going with your
| family somewhere on Sunday it's very quiet on the roads. Also
| awesome for long distance driving, always plan those for a
| Sunday and the traffic flows much smoother. As for the idea
| that it moves the traffic to other days - no it doesn't,
| because a lot of that traffic wouldn't be driving on Sunday
| anyway - most businesses are closed on Sundays anyway.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Perhaps traffic flows smoother because there is just less
| traffic altogether on Sunday. And anyway, who is operating
| these trucks that would be driving on Sunday if it was
| legal, but instead don't drive at all? If trucks aren't
| driving on Sunday anyway then there is little need to ban
| them.
| kazinator wrote:
| Plus, if you don't like truck drivers, why would you want
| more of them in heaven with you?
| kazinator wrote:
| > The truck edged out of a driveway and began, slowly, to turn
| left onto the road, blocking traffic in both directions. It was
| as if someone had erected a big steel wall.
|
| I'm guessing that the charges were likely dropped because they
| couldn't prove that the truck suddenly entered a lane of
| traffic, having no right-of-way, and leaving the oncoming
| vehicle no time to stop.
| cyberax wrote:
| > If you need 3 trailers, time to go back to freight trains.
|
| The main problem with trains is the slooooooow speed of loading
| and unloading. It takes ages to load/unload cargo, so the
| resulting effective speed is often barely better than a running
| speed of an Alzheimer's patient.
|
| This can be solved, but it'll require innovation and a lot of
| capital spending. Back around 2006, I worked with a company
| that tried to develop automatic couplers. So that it would be
| possible to couple and uncouple train cars electronically. This
| alone would have sped up train car sorting speed by 2-3 times.
| The rail companies were not interested.
|
| That's why railways are now used basically only for bulk cargo.
| They don't even _want_ to compete.
| tantalor wrote:
| > barely better than a running speed of an Alzheimer's
| patient.
|
| wtf
| conradev wrote:
| Someone is working on it:
| https://www.fastcompany.com/90713785/former-spacex-
| engineers...
| cyberax wrote:
| Yeah, I'm watching them, but I doubt they'll succeed.
| Railways are not interested in them succeeding.
| JimtheCoder wrote:
| "If you need 3 trailers, time to go back to freight trains."
|
| Trains can only run on train tracks.
|
| The tracks/train stations don't always go close to where the
| freight needs to go.
|
| It is bordering on impossible to build new rail infrastructure
| to get freight where it needs to go.
|
| It takes a lot longer to ship something on a train than on a
| truck.
|
| Add on the fact that transport in general is getting more
| expensive, and I don't think more regulations on trucking is
| the right answer.
|
| Just install the guards on the side of trailers and be done
| with it...
| renewiltord wrote:
| Fortunately, if you avoided listening to environmentalists,
| transit advocates, and people with children and bought a high
| ride-height vehicle like a Dodge Ram 1500, your vehicle will be
| tall enough to actually contact the truck or trailer without a
| decapitation!
|
| Pickups and SUVs are way safer, guys. Up to you what you do with
| the information.
| rnga1dco wrote:
| As the article mentions, there is collaborative documentary that
| was produced with this story. You can watch it, and I think most
| FRONTLINE documentaries free on youtube:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LyaWzOesXk
| milkytron wrote:
| I watched this last night, and it's always interesting to
| people in business talk about the cost of saving lives.
|
| There was one point where the reporter was interviewing a guy
| from the ATA (American Trucking Associations) where the ATA
| person says that one lost life is too many. And this is very
| common across so many industries, safety first as they always
| say.
|
| But then as soon as you put a cost associated with saving a
| life, the whole idea of safety first goes out the window. In
| this case, underrides are clearly avoidable and really don't
| cost that much to prevent. Retrofitted truck solutions are
| available, cheap, and easy to install.
|
| It just irks me that so many industries preach about safety,
| but as soon as it has even the most minor impact on the bottom
| line, it becomes a hot topic. They should really be saying,
| "Safety first (but only after profits, shareholders, revenue,
| etc)"
|
| I get that businesses need to make money to stay afloat, but
| with a profit margin of 14% [0], surely there is room to save
| some lives.
|
| [0] https://www.projectionhub.com/post/10-trucking-industry-
| fina...
| toast0 wrote:
| > But then as soon as you put a cost associated with saving a
| life, the whole idea of safety first goes out the window. In
| this case, underrides are clearly avoidable and really don't
| cost that much to prevent. Retrofitted truck solutions are
| available, cheap, and easy to install.
|
| There's a reasonable argument to not even bother with
| retrofitting. This has been a known issue for decades, just
| start building it into new trailers, and eventually the old
| trailers will age out and/or become uninsurable.
| bamfly wrote:
| > There was one point where the reporter was interviewing a
| guy from the ATA (American Trucking Associations) where the
| ATA person says that one lost life is too many.
|
| You see the same crap inside companies. All-hands rah-rah
| meetings or zoom calls or mass emails with this kind of stuff
| in it, then the next day, directives to the contrary. Or, the
| handbook says to do X, for safety reasons, but your
| supervisor says to do Y that will be _impossible_ to
| accomplish if you do X, like you 're supposed to.
|
| In union shops the workers often have leverage to point at
| the handbook, laws, or contract, and tell their supervisor to
| get fucked, but others just have to deal with it or find
| another job. Ditto non-safety stuff like violating the
| company's own policies on shift scheduling, or overtime wage-
| theft, or any number of other things.
| alexpotato wrote:
| > I watched this last night, and it's always interesting to
| people in business talk about the cost of saving lives.
|
| My favorite example of this is the "children under 2 don't
| need their own airline seat". The idea was that if you
| required a separate seat, more people would drive. That in
| turn would lead to more fatalities as the fatality/mile in
| cars is so much higher than in planes.
|
| I would also point out that if someone has purchased life
| insurance, they have explicitly made a decision about the
| cost of a life when they choose the amount of insurance they
| are willing to take on.
| bamfly wrote:
| > I would also point out that if someone has purchased life
| insurance, they have explicitly made a decision about the
| cost of a life when they choose the amount of insurance
| they are willing to take on.
|
| This doesn't follow. It's not as if you're only allowed to
| purchase life insurance if it somehow accounts for the
| entire "cost of your life", whatever that is. I doubt most
| policies and policy-buyers attempt to achieve that, though
| some might.
|
| [EDIT] To expand a bit, I'm pretty sure a lot of policies
| are purchased with _goal-oriented_ thinking, and that goal
| 's usually not "account for the cost of the life": for an
| older person, it might be "ensure end-of-life expenses are
| covered". For a younger one, it might be "make sure my
| family's OK until they can recover from the loss, which I
| guesstimate to require $X" or "make sure my family can
| afford to remain where they are at least until the kids are
| out of school"
| bombcar wrote:
| Most planners would tell you that you that you need
| insurance to replace your expected income (or the cost of
| replacing a non-working spouse's childcare). That amount
| will often be much less than you'd pay _not to die_.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| There's something I don't understand about this crash in
| particular:
|
| It sounds like Marcos' death is blamed on the actions of the
| truck driver, as well as the lack of an under-ride bumper.
|
| But don't we normally consider drivers responsible for crashing
| into objects towards which they're travelling?
|
| It doesn't sound like a situation where the truck jumped into
| traffic suddenly from a hidden driveway:
|
| > The truck edged out of a driveway and began, slowly, to turn
| left onto the road, blocking traffic in both directions.
|
| I.e., wouldn't death have also been avoided if Marcos had been
| traveling at a speed that allowed him to stop in time? I'd think
| that addressing that (if I'm right) would save a lot more than
| ~100 lives/year.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| I might see the truck edging out of a driveway and trust that
| they're going to properly yield right of way and not make
| themselves an obstacle. By the time I realize "my" mistake, I
| might not have enough distance to stop.
| slt2021 wrote:
| Do you want to be right or alive?
|
| Pick one
| toss1 wrote:
| Yup
|
| I remember my grandfather telling me long before I could
| drive:
|
| "You don't want to be dead right."
| slt2021 wrote:
| Similar wisdom about arguing with your wife: Do you want
| to be right or happy? /i
| martinpw wrote:
| "Better to be 3 minutes late in the current life than 30
| years early in the next"
| shakow wrote:
| Without putting blame anywhere and independently of who has
| the right of way, don't you just have your preservation
| instinct kicking in telling you that just giving a bit of
| brakes is not a bad idea, and that the risk/gain ratio of
| losing 10 seconds of your day vs. getting killed is not worth
| it?
| [deleted]
| robgibbons wrote:
| In motorcycle safety courses, you're taught to never assume
| that other drivers can see you, in fact you are encouraged
| to operate as if you're invisible, and ride accordingly.
|
| Growing up, I was told that it's better to be alive than to
| be "right" as it pertains to right-of-way. You can either
| insist on continuing because it's your right, or you can
| brake early assuming they're going to cut you off.
| shakow wrote:
| Agreed. An even from a more trivial perspective, I
| overwhelmingly prefer to lose my right of way and 3' of
| my day rather than fork out thousands in body job on my
| car.
| toast0 wrote:
| We don't have enough details from the article to determine
| fault in this particular collision. I'm not familiar with that
| particular highway, but there are a lot of US highways where
| (legal) prevailing speeds are 40 mph or higher and there are
| driveways from which unprotected left turns are permitted.
|
| I think including details specific collisions is probably a
| distraction. Regardless of fault, this type of collision
| happens; and does the estimate of 200 lives / year justify the
| cost of adding underguards on trailers? (and rightful grumping
| about poor quality of statistics)
|
| That's separate from a policy to eliminate driveways on
| highways above a certain speed, or provide separation of
| directions to eliminate left turns, or a nationwide 25 mph
| speed limit, or a separate road network only for large trucks,
| or whatever proposal you have to reduce the speed of collision
| here.
|
| FWIW: Here's a street view of US-281 where it enters Hidalgo
| County, and the posted limit is 60 mph:
| https://www.google.com.mx/maps/@26.0843029,-97.8616537,3a,75...
|
| Again, we don't know where the collision took place, this is
| just where I happened to look on the highway where it's roughly
| paralleling the Rio Grande. A speed limit of 60 mph on a well
| paved, two lane highway through a rural area is consistent with
| my expectations.
|
| Closer to McAllen, TX, where the article says the deceased
| works, it's two lanes in each direction with a center turn
| lane, and a speed limit 55 mph.
| https://www.google.com/maps/@26.1518933,-98.1911449,3a,75y,2...
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| I remember reading a claim that logistics companies will often
| tell their drivers to break traffic laws (ostensibly "only when
| it's not dangerous") and they consider any citations to be a cost
| of doing business.
|
| While I can't really verify that's true, it tracks with behavior
| I see of truck drivers in tight quarters; it's been trending
| towards this "I'm turning and I barely care if you're able to
| stop in time" kind of behavior.
| praptak wrote:
| Why would they tell this? Just set incentives. Wink wink, we
| don't care how you do it but here's the bonus for the speed of
| delivery.
| JimtheCoder wrote:
| "I remember reading a claim that logistics companies will often
| tell their drivers to break traffic laws"
|
| I don't think most drivers are waiting for permission from
| their superiors to break traffic laws...
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(page generated 2023-06-14 23:00 UTC)