IST Statement on Utility Trailer’s New Offering of Side Impact Guards for Semitrailers
Represents Seismic Shift from Trucking Industry in Acknowledgement of Safety, Fuel Efficiency, and Cost Effectiveness of Side Impact Guards
After years of advocating and litigation from families and safety advocates, one of the nation’s largest manufacturers of truck trailers, Utility Trailer Manufacturing Co., has begun to offer Side Impact Guards (also known as Side Underride Guards) as a safety feature on its refrigerated and dry van semitrailers.
Side Impact Guards are demonstrated life-saving components that can easily be affixed to the sides of semitrailers to prevent deaths and serious injuries that are caused from underride collisions. Underride collisions occur when semitrailers collide with passenger vehicles, bicyclists, or pedestrians, and due to the height differential, vehicles and bicycles become trapped underneath the semitrailer and passenger compartments become impaled by the side of the semitrailer, with catastrophic results.
The horrific impacts of side underride collisions have been known for more than half of century, and public safety advocates have for years demonstrated the safety and cost-effectiveness of Side Impact Guards. The trucking industry has heavily resisted regulatory mandates for these simple safety components and, until recently, has done little to investigate, engineer, or design guards that would prevent side underride collisions.
After sustaining multi-million-dollar legal judgments against it from families on behalf of loved ones who died from side underride collisions, Utility Trailer recently released its own Side Impact Guard test results, https://www.utilitytrailer.com/wp-content/uploads/Side-Impact-Guard.jpg.
This is welcome news. The Institute for Safer Trucking, a nonprofit committed to educating the public about safety solutions to reduce truck crashes, injuries, and deaths, commends the company on this positive step forward.
“Too many of the families and survivors that we work with have endured unimaginable suffering and loss because underride crashes have been allowed to persist,” said Harry Adler, Principal and Co-Founder of IST. “We look forward to the positive effects Utility’s actions will have on truck safety and urge the other major trailer to follow suit. Our Board Members Laurie Higginbotham and Eric Hein have been leading advocates calling for the use of side impact guards to prevent others from experiencing truck side underride collisions like the ones that claimed the lives of their sons, Michael Higginbotham and Riley Hein. We are proud to know that their advocacy and education is changing the trucking industry for the better.”
More still needs to be done on this issue, as IST Board Member and underride guard safety advocate Eric Hein states in reaction to this news: “For years, crash tests have demonstrated that adding side underride guards to semitrailers would save lives. Utility Trailer’s side impact guards are an important first step. I encourage Utility Trailer to fully embrace this safe technology by including side underride guards as standard equipment on all semitrailers, and to continue to engineer solutions to provide at least 22” inches of ground clearance (rather than Utility Trailer’s guards which provide only 27” of clearance), like the 22” clearance required under rear underride guards, which would better protect the traveling public.” Hein added that he “encourages the industry to fully adopt this technology by including it as standard equipment on all semitrailers.”