Deadly crashes spur calls for tractor-trailer guards

Associated Press

ALBANY, N.Y.

Fifty years after actress Jayne Mansfield died in a Buick that slammed underneath a tractor-trailer, auto-safety advocates say regulations inspired by that gruesome crash need updating to prevent hundreds of similar deaths annually.

“We’re asking Congress to pass a bill that would mandate comprehensive underride protection, not only on tractor-trailers but on single-unit trucks,” such as dump trucks, said Marianne Karth, who lost two teenage daughters, AnnaLeah and Mary, when her Crown Victoria crashed beneath a tractor-trailer in Georgia in 2013.

After two cars skidded under a jackknifed milk tanker truck in northern New York on July 6, killing four people, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer called on federal regulators to order big trucks to be equipped with side guards to prevent cars from sliding beneath them in a crash.

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, 301 of the 1,542 car occupants killed in collisions with a tractor-trailer in 2015 died when their vehicle struck the side of the rig. Another 292 died when their vehicle struck the rear. The institute’s researchers estimate that half the fatal crashes between large trucks and passenger vehicles involve underride, which makes air bags and other crash protection ineffective because the top half of the car is sheared off.

Under regulations enacted after Mansfield’s death, big rigs are required to have rear underride guards to keep cars from traveling beneath the back of a trailer in a collision. Known as “Mansfield bars,” they consist of two vertical steel bars supporting a horizontal bar less than 2 feet from the ground.

Side guards aren’t required by federal regulations, but at least three cities – Boston, New York and Seattle – mandate them on city-owned trucks to eliminate deaths and injuries, particularly among pedestrians and bicyclists.