Arlington, Virginia — May 22, 2017 — Strong underride guards on the rear of tractor-trailers have proven effective in preventing underride in crash tests conducted by the US-based Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). Now, new IIHS tests show how a well-built guard can prevent a passenger vehicle from sliding beneath the side of a semitrailer.
The tests conducted this spring mark the first time that IIHS has evaluated a side underride guard. IIHS ran two 35-mph crash tests: one with an AngelWing side underride protection device from Airflow Deflector and a second test with a fibreglass side skirt intended to improve aerodynamics, not to prevent underride. The results were dramatically different.
In both tests, a midsize car struck the center of a 53-foot-long dry van trailer. In the AngelWing test, the underride guard bent but didn’t allow the car to go underneath the trailer, so the car’s airbags and safety belt could properly restrain the test dummy in the driver seat. In the second test with no underride guard for protection, the car ran into the trailer and kept going. The impact sheared off part of the roof, and the sedan became wedged beneath the trailer. In a real-world crash like this, any occupants in the car would likely sustain fatal injuries.
According to the IIHS, in 2015, 301 of the 1,542 passenger vehicle occupants killed in two-vehicle crashes with a tractor-trailer died when their vehicles struck the side of a tractor-trailer. This compares with the 292 people who died when their passenger vehicles struck the rear of a tractor-trailer. Because of gaps in crash data, IIHS researchers can’t determine exactly how many of these crashes involve underride, but they estimate that underride occurs in about half of fatal crashes between large trucks and passenger vehicles.
Check out the video below for more on the IIHS tests and results.
