• 02
  • May
    2011

A motor vehicle accident involving a semi truck is usually dangerous simply because of the height, weight and nature of the large vehicle. But just how dangerous are semi-truck accidents? According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), if your vehicle rear ends one of these large commercial trucks, there is nearly an 80 percent chance of truck underride, a situation that often causes serious injury and death.

Because personal vehicles are so much smaller than semi trucks, cars in the midst of rear-ending the back of large semi trucks often slide underneath the trucks, causing the backs of the trucks to crash into the cars' windshields, crushing - and even in some cases decapitating - the drivers.

Due to the high fatality risk of such accidents, the government has passed regulations that require many - though not all - of these trucks to install underride guards before hitting the roads.

However, the IIHS says these guards are failing even at low speeds. The Institute conducted crash tests involving three different semi-truck underride guards that met current government regulations and found that they were not strong enough to withstand these types of accidents.

According to Adrian Lund, IIHS President, "The damage to the cars in some of these tests was so devastating that it's hard to watch the footage of the tests without wincing. If these had been real-world crashes, there would be no survivors."

As a result, the Institute is currently petitioning the federal government to implement new underride guard requirements for trucks. Specifically, they want the government to require stronger underride guards and expand the requirement to include additional large trucks and trailers.

Source: http://autos.aol.com/article/semi-crashes-proving-fatal/?icid=maing%7Cmain5%7Cdl8%7Csec1_lnk2%7C49280