Lethal inaction: As fatal truck crashes surge, U.S. government won’t make an easy fix
The lanky, 38-year-old father of four was, according to his dispatcher, "a very safe driver who followed the rules. He always put safety first."
Until one spring afternoon when he didn't.
In a dash-cam recording from inside the cab of a 2016 Volvo semi, Kolkman stares down at a black tablet computer in his right hand while piloting the 18-wheeler down the interstate at 70 mph. It ends seconds later as the truck slams into the rear of a 2014 Toyota Camry stuck in traffic outside
Kolkman's big rig never braked, one witness told the state police. It "barely slowed down," said another.
Four lives were lost in that fiery crash near the
More than 4,300 people were killed in accidents involving semis and other large trucks in 2016, a 28 percent increase over 2009, according to the federal government. It would be equal to a 737 airliner crashing twice a month, killing all on board.
"Those should be eye-opening numbers," said
Yet the
"They are absolutely a culpable villain in this picture," said
In a months-long investigation, The Star found that NHTSA has largely ignored repeated pleas from the
On at least 10 occasions since the late 1990s, the safety board recommended that NHTSA require forward crash avoidance and mitigation systems on all heavy trucks.
Two decades after the safety board first sounded that alarm, NHTSA has yet to publish a proposed regulation of its own, much less put one in effect.
"Many of these crashes could have been mitigated, or possibly even prevented, had rear-end collision avoidance technologies been in place," the safety board said in a scathing 2016 critique of NHTSA's failure to act.
It's not as if the technology is groundbreaking, or unfamiliar. Many new cars -- and soon all -- come equipped with automatic emergency braking and forward collision warning systems, among other high-tech safety features.
The auto industry promises that, by 2022, this safety equipment will be standard on all new passenger vehicles sold in
Makers of heavy trucks, on the other hand, have made no such commitment. As a result, only a small percentage of semis on the road today have collision avoidance technology.
While some large trucking companies are willing to shell out a couple of thousand dollars for the optional equipment when updating their fleets, others would rather not add to the
Presented with The Star's findings, some in
"Safety mechanisms for the trucking industry have not kept up with the pace of technological advancement," Booker told The Star. "It's time that
Motorists on today's crowded highways are even more vulnerable to being rammed from behind by an 18-wheeler in a work zone or traffic jam than they were a decade ago. And it's only going to get worse in the decades ahead as freight shipments by truck climb to meet the needs of a growing economy and a consumer culture that does much of its shopping online.
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NHTSA won't say why it has not followed through on the
"NHTSA researched early systems from 2013 to 2016, and is currently studying next-generation AEB (automatic emergency braking) technology through a naturalistic driving study using a field operation test," the agency said. "NHTSA expects to complete the critical field operation testing in 18 to 24 months. This research and other information will help inform an agency decision on next steps."
Safety advocates call that "paralysis by analysis," and say American motorists would be better served if NHTSA moved forward with technology that's been proven to save lives instead of committing so much of its limited resources on things like driverless cars. The
"It's all being pushed off by this need to focus on this thing in the future," said
The priority should be on saving lives now, said
"Our government has failed to fund safe roads and encourages 80,000-pound trucks on the same highways as families and children in 3,000-pound vehicles," Hall said.
Why not mandate, he added, "available technology to provide safety to those who fund the highway system -- the taxpayer?"
'They go too fast'
"They go too fast," she said. "I'm nervous every time I see a semi coming near."
Brake lights blazed cherry red across the westbound lanes of
She and three friends, all 19-year-old sophomores at
"We expected some traffic," she recalled, but doesn't remember whether traffic had come to a complete stop or was creeping along. Nor does she recall whether she checked the rear-view mirror and glimpsed the blue semi roaring up behind her at highway speed.
"I had a brain injury, so I lost a lot of memory from that day," she said.
What she does know is that her friend and backseat passenger
"She was right behind me," Arvanitakis said. "I heard she was killed on impact."
Today's crash avoidance systems were designed to compensate for human failure and misbehavior. According to the safety board, speeding, distracted driving and impairment are, in that order, the three leading causes of fatal wrecks.
Truck crashes have grown deadlier as speed limits have risen across the country, because even today's well-built cars with all their safety features are no match for the lethal mass of a semi traveling at high velocity.
Forty-three states have maximum speed limits of 70 or above, compared to 35 states a decade ago. In seven states, 80 mph is now the limit on interstates; only two set it that high in 2008.
"Surviving a crash becomes less viable at about a 45 mph impact and it starts to go up pretty exponentially," said Capt.
Our roads are also more clogged with traffic now than a decade ago, increasing the potential for more wrecks.
Today's forward collision avoidance systems can prevent more than seven out of 10 rear-end truck collisions, according to companies that have deployed the equipment in their fleets. When wrecks do occur, injuries are generally less severe and property damages are lower, findings that NHTSA does not dispute.
"The silver bullet out there right now is automatic emergency braking," said
At least 300 people die and 15,000 are injured annually in wrecks where a semi runs into the back of another vehicle, according to a
Since the summer of 2017, three rear-end truck crashes very much like the one in
All three wrecks might have been averted if the semis that crashed into slow-moving traffic had automatic emergency braking.
On impact, shards of plastic, glass and metal rained onto the highway. Only after the semi shoved the burning wreckage of the Camry under a 53-foot flatbed trailer loaded with steel bars did the vehicles come to a stop.
"Their wallets were the only way they could identify them," Biddle's daughter
There wasn't much else left when friends and family members visited the tow lot a day or two later to collect what personal items they could find. It took close to an hour to scrape the melted soles of
Biddle was distressed to learn that in the seconds leading up to the wreck, the truck driver wasn't paying attention to the road ahead. But even more disturbing was to discover that the federal government has long known how to prevent such crashes, yet cautious bureaucrats and
"I was appalled," Biddle said. "To know that this could have been prevented, that I could still hold my son and that my children could still hug their father, if only someone with the power to change it had taken action years ago, is beyond disheartening."
A history of inaction
The
But the independent agency has limited authority. It can only investigate commercial vehicle crashes and make recommendations on preventing them.
The agency has no power to impose rules. That authority rests with
"I am even more disappointed today than I was in 1999 over the lack of leadership and safety culture at NHTSA," he told The Star.
NHTSA is notoriously slow to act. Its bureaucrats and scientists can spend decades studying an issue before proposing a new safety requirement only to drop it suddenly.
One example that especially galls highway safety advocates: In 2006, the agency began considering a proposal to require use of a mechanism that limits the speed of big trucks and to set that limit at no more than 68 mph. It would not have added a dime to the price of a new truck and prevent an estimated 1,115 fatal crashes every year, according to NHTSA's own estimates.
But after 11 years of consideration, the agency shelved the rule last year in response to industry complaints and a Trump administration edict blocking most new regulations on business.
Even when NHTSA does act, it can take a very long time. Decades passed before NHTSA got around to setting height and strength standards for the bars that hang from the tail ends of truck trailers that help prevent the roofs of cars from being sheared off when they rear end trucks.
So the fact that 20 years have gone by without the agency moving forward on requiring crash avoidance systems is not all that unusual, according to auto safety activists like
"You see this over and over and over again," said Fennell, founder of
A decade passed before they finally did this year, and Fennell says the parallels with truck safety regulation delays "are uncanny."
"Lives are being needlessly taken," she said.
Weeks apart along the same stretch of
Had it passed,
But as a Democrat in a
Still, the bills' supporters remained hopeful, because NHTSA chose that moment to take what at the time seemed like a step forward. Four safety groups had formally asked the agency to begin the long process of writing a regulation requiring that all large trucks be equipped with forward collision avoidance and mitigation systems.
NHTSA made no promises, but accepted the petition for rulemaking and published an endorsement of sorts in the
Then nothing happened.
In the three years since, there have been no hearing notices or invitation for public comments, much less a proposed rule, which doesn't surprise
"When I was NHTSA administrator in the 1970s," she said, "I had to push like heck to get anything done."
No one knows the agency better inside or out. Before she headed NHTSA under President
She said efforts aimed at getting NHTSA to impose a rule requiring automatic emergency braking on trucks is doomed to failure without active support from a strong leader heading the agency.
And there simply haven't been many over the years, she said, under Republican or Democratic presidents.
A year and a half into Trump's presidency, an administrator still hasn't been confirmed and the current nominee, acting administrator
"It doesn't have any leadership; that's a problem," Claybrook said.
Another problem is that the agency lacks a sense of urgency to get anything done, she said. Staffers lack enthusiasm for writing new regulations when they know there's no support at the top.
Regulators are also subject to pressure from industry groups, which spend a fortune trying to influence policy. Lobbying efforts on behalf of the trucking industry totaled
"Anything that costs money, the industry usually opposes," Claybrook said. "Not every single company. But mostly. And it anesthetizes the agency. Unless you have a strong leader in these regulatory agencies who is intent on getting things done, it's really hard."
That's led to a growing trend within NHTSA to broker voluntary deals aimed at achieving the same goals as a regulation, but without any teeth to enforce those aims.
An example was when automakers agreed to install automatic emergency braking on virtually all passenger vehicles by 2022.
While the Obama administration trumpeted that deal as a great achievement, Claybrook and others were unimpressed because it came without uniform standards or any mechanism to enforce them.
"The whole concept of voluntary standards is a reflection of how broken the NHTSA auto safety rulemaking process is," said
"NHTSA has basically thrown up their hands and said our rulemaking process is just too intense and requires too much cost-benefit analysis."
Other countries have taken bolder steps. Last fall,
The
'What's to lose?'
The consequence of not requiring automatic emergency braking systems on trucks was made tragically clear one night two years ago outside of
A Toyota Sequoia was having engine troubles and traveling about 40 mph on
In a report published this spring, the
But the
Former American Trucking Associations executive
"When you have 80,000 pounds crashing down the roads full of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of goods, capable of killing large numbers of people, why wouldn't you put in a system that costs a couple of thousand bucks?" Abramson asks. "What's to lose?"
For those in the trucking industry who believe saving lives should be a priority, the evidence is clear, said
As the owner of
Fewer wrecks means less money paid out of the company's self-insurance fund and less spent on repairs and replacement of damaged equipment.
But while the
You get different opinions from the industry's two main lobbying groups.
The more powerful of the two, the American Trucking Associations, is high on the technology, and has been since at least 2015, when the group's then-executive director, former
But he was careful in not coming out in favor of a government mandate.
"Our position is the same," ATA spokesman
But there are many small firms that might not be able to afford these safety upgrades, he said, and shouldn't be forced to shoulder that cost.
The other big lobbying group is OOIDA, the
According to the
That's the constituency OOIDA speaks for, and many of those companies have a hard enough time making ends meet without having to pay more for their trucks, the groups says.
Plus, some are skeptical about the equipment's effectiveness.
"We don't know whether this stuff really works," said OOIDA's president
It works, said long-haul driver Mike "Mustang" Crawford of
Over the past 24 years,
"I do believe it's helped stop a lot of accidents,"
Still, he said, "You have to watch what you're doing, you have to forget
But what if a driver doesn't heed that advice, like on that day a year ago last May outside
But why wouldn't the government require it?
"It's taking more lives and it doesn't need to continue to happen," she said with notes of anger, grief and disgust. "I would urge them to do something immediately, because it is so preventable."
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