Wrongful Death from Crash into the Back of a Semitrailer
If a car slides underneath a semitrailer during a crash, the likelihood of the driver or a passenger dying increases substantially. Recent tests by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) found that in crashes involving a small portion of the truck’s rear, most trailers fail to prevent potentially deadly underride, where the front of the car is crushed as it slides underneath the trailer. Those inside can sustain fatal head and neck injuries.
Semitrailer underride guards are steel bars that hang from the backs of trailers to prevent the front of a car or other passenger vehicle from going underneath during a crash. IIHS research found that the minimum strength and dimensions required for underride guards are inadequate.
The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) is responsible for establishing standards for underride guards. “It is time for the NHTSA to protect the public and require stronger, better underride guards,” said Fred Pritzker, lead semitrailer accident attorney for our Accident Law Team. You can contact Fred HERE.
In its initial testing, IIHS tested a 2010 Malibu, its Top Safety Pick for that year. In underride tests in which the guards held up, the Malibu’s structure and airbags protected the crash dummy, and injury measures were low and not life-threatening. However, in tests where the underride guards failed, head and neck injury measures were so high that IIHS determined real drivers would have died.
A 2011 IIHS study of 115 crashes in which a passenger vehicle struck the back of a heavy truck or semitrailer found only about one-fifth involved no underride or negligible underride. Nearly half of the vehicles had severe or catastrophic underride damage, and those vehicles accounted for 23 of the 28 fatal crashes in the study.
Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Crash Test Results
The initial round of IIHS crash testing was conducted on three semitrailers in 2010 and 2011. The institute found the following:
A Hyundai trailer had “the weakest underride guard.” When a Malibu hit the center of the Hyundai trailer at 35 mph in a full-width crash, the guard broke, resulting in catastrophic underride.
A Vanguard trailer’s underride guard allowed moderate underride at 25 mph and severe underride at 35 mph during 50-percent-overlap tests.
A Wabash trailer had no underride in either the full-width or the 50-percent-overlap test. However, the underride was catastrophic in a 30-percent-overlap test. According to IIHS, “that’s because the Malibu hit the guard outside its vertical attachment bar, causing the unsupported end of the guard to bend forward.”
Hyundai and Vanguard made changes to their trailers after these initial tests. Wabash did not.
In the second round of testing, IIHS tested Hyudai, Vanguard and 5 other companies. All passed the full-width test. All except the Vanguard passed the 50-percent-overlap test. Only one, Manac, passed the 30-percent-overlap test.
According to IIHS, the trailers that failed the 30-percent-overlap test because the underride guards’ vertical supports are located an average of 28 inches from the trailer’s edge, too far from the edge to prevent them from breaking during this kind of accident. Manac passed this test, says IIHS, because the underride guard is attached to a reinforced floor and spaced just 18 inches from the edge.
“If the guard stays in tact, the sensors in our dummies tell us that the chance for a life threatening injury is very low,” says David Zuby, the Institute’s chief research officer.
In addition to calling on NHTSA to provide better standards for guards, we urge trucking companies and others buying trailers to insist on stronger guards.
Attorneys Fred Pritzker and Eric Hageman represent accident victims and their families nationwide in personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits. They hire forensic engineers and other experts to help them inspect semitrailers involved in accidents for signs that a defective part caused or contributed to the accident. Fred’s experience and success with product liability cases has led to speaking engagements at Harvard Law School and Cornell University.
Semitrailer accidents can involve people and businesses from several states. For this reason, Fred and Eric represent clients throughout the United States, and use their experience to determine “venue,” where to file a lawsuit against a trucking company and its driver. This can have a huge bearing on the amount of money recovered for an accident victim and his or her family.
