OOIDA takes truck side-guard report complaints to Congress

July 10, 2024

WASHINGTON — Truckers have told House and Senate leaders to steer clear of writing laws based on a report they say is highly flawed that recommends requiring new safety equipment on their vehicles.

In a letter to Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo., and Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., who chair the House Transportation & Infrastructure and Senate Commerce committees, respectively, Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association President Todd Spencer said that the recent Advisory Committee on Underride Protection (ACUP) biennial report sent to Congress earlier this month should, for the most part, be ignored.

The reason: a lack of consensus on the data used to produce the recommendations, according to OOIDA, which led to the 16-member advisory committee splitting the report into majority and minority viewpoints. OOIDA was represented on ACUP by OOIDA board member Doug Smith.

“Safety advocacy representatives manipulated their numerical advantage in Committee membership and approved a motion to define ‘consensus’ as a simple majority that minimized opposing viewpoints of other ACUP participants,” Spencer wrote.

“OOIDA warned that granting such an advantage to biased advocates would jeopardize the panel’s ability to achieve its mission of developing a concise, data-driven report that garnered consensus support among participants and stakeholders.”

Spencer asserted that the recommendations by the committee are costly and unachievable and were approved by a “slim majority” of ACUP participants.

“These motions merited substantive opposition and should not be used as a foundation for policy development,” he said. “Further, some sections of the majority report ventured beyond the authorized scope of the panel and often lacked empirical data or research to support inclusion.”

The most controversial section included allegations that Department of Transportation officials suppressed certain types of crash data. Omitting that data, safety and crash-victim advocates contend, underplayed the benefits and overestimated the costs in the economic analysis of a side-guard rulemaking pending at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

“NHTSA should not advance potential new underride standards until further research, analysis, and testing is completed as directed in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law,” Spencer stated.

“The only recommendations that garnered true consensus support among panel members generally involved enhancing research and reporting. As such, these are the only elements of the final report Congress and USDOT should take seriously.”

In response, the Truck Safety Coalition (TSC), a crash victim advocacy group, pointed out OOIDA’s call for more research before proceeding with side-guard equipment mandates “is literally the same recommendation made by the National Highway Safety Bureau made 54 years ago,” TSC executive director Zach Cahalan told FreightWaves.

“Half a century of tolerating gruesome death and debilitating injuries from side underride crashes is shameful and no longer tolerable to a majority of ACUP stakeholders.”

Cahalan added that the trucking industry tends to oppose any safety measure that increases the cost of doing business.

“TSC respectfully suggests that truck crash victims and survivors, the only stakeholder voices who have no financial stake in this decision, be afforded far greater credibility than owner-operators, corporate trucking, and manufacturers who sell goods or services for their livelihoods.”