FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACTS: CRASH - (888) 353-4572

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Thursday, January 18, 1996) Safety advocates decried a new safety standard issued today by the U.S. government that requires some new tractor trailers to be equipped with an inferior rear impact guard that will prevent only a few deaths caused by cars colliding with the backs of trucks.

After 29 years of delay, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced the final rule on truck underride guards that Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways (CRASH) warns:

· Will save only 4 14 lives a year, even though more than 500 people are killed annually in rear impact crashes with trucks;

· Rejects state of the art rear impact guards that could save scores of passenger vehicle occupants lives each year;

· Exempts most trailers and semitrailers;

· Exempts all single unit trucks;

· Ignores crash deaths above 25 mph that are about 80 percent of annual rear impact fatalities; and

· Allows the rear impact guard to sit 22 inches off the ground, in spite of extensive research showing the guard should have a clearance of about 16 inches.

NHTSA sided with the trucking industry and turned its backs on the American public by settling for an inferior, cheap and quick fix, said Joan Claybrook, co chair of CRASH.

CRASH Co-Chair Dr. Gerald Donaldson said that after nearly 30 years of delay, NHTSA's underride guard in the final rule is too high, too weak, too cheap and too late.

Over the past several years, CRASH has been leading a Stop the Rovin Guillotines campaign urging NHTSA to end over a quarter century of disgraceful delay and neglect by issuing a new standard requiring stateoftheart rear impact guards on all trucks to prevent the many violent deaths and injuries that occur when passenger vehicles collide with back ends of trucks.

Safety advocates have stressed that the rear impact guards found on many trucks today, required by an outdated Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) regulation from 1953, are far too high for most passenger vehicles and they are made either too weak or too rigid. The ICC guard, which is usually mounted 25 to 30 inches above the ground, can slice through car occupant compartments like guillotines, or they can fail and allow the back ends of big trucks to slash into small vehicles, causing violent death and devastating injury to occupants.

There are 11,551 crashes annually where cars rearend trucks, trailers and semitrailers. CRASH says these collisions result in between 500 and 700 deaths and about 18,000 injuries. Truck trailers represent only 28 percent of heavy vehicles but account for 73 percent of occupant deaths and 80 percent of the injuries. Yet, the safety agency has saddled the trucking industry with a multimillion dollar bill for rear guards that will make almost no difference in the annual death toll of cars crashing into the rear of big trucks.

Safety organizations have repeatedly urged NHTSA to require that all trucks and trailers be equipped with velocitysensitive energyabsorbing rear impact guards mounted lower to the ground (16 inches) to effectively protect car occupants from death and injury in rear impact crashes. This safety technology is proven and wellknown.

The truck rear impact guard issue was the longeststanding unresolved regulatory rulemaking in the federal safety agency's history. NHTSA proposed rear impact guard regulations for trucks in 1969 and 1981 that were never acted upon. In January 1992, the federal safety agency issued another proposal setting the rear underride guard 22 inches off the ground and weakening it even more because they claimed that any other design would be too costly to the trucking industry.

The final chapter in NHTSA's response to the truck underride problem is a disgrace, Claybrook said. NHTSA has repeatedly ignored the safety community's pleas for a superior standard that would require a lower to the ground, more energy absorbing, stateoftheart rear impact guard that costs less than an expensive car stereo system. These devices have been used in Europe with tremendous success.

In 1967, movie star Jayne Mansfield was decapitated in a truck rear underride collision that first drew national attention to the dangers of rear impact crashes with big trucks.

Donaldson said the truck underride guard proposed by NHTSA would provide little safety benefit over the ICC guard. NHTSA admits that only 4 to 14 lives will be saved a year and that the majority of trucks would be exempted from this regulation. Donaldson said that the NHTSA guard will still allow most people to die in rear impact crashes and to suffer permanently disabling injuries. NHTSA has done almost nothing to change this.

Claybrook said that roving guillotines will still rule the roads.