CalBike is sponsoring the Safe Vehicles Save Lives Bill, SB 961. Senator Scott Wiener’s bill will mandate two safety measures: speed limiters on passenger vehicles and side guards on freight trucks. But a provision for truck side guards, a low-cost safety measure that would save hundreds of lives every year, may get dropped.

What happens during a truck collision

Most semi-truck trips successfully move goods from one place to another. But, when something goes wrong, and a vulnerable road user or a passenger vehicle collides with a big truck, the results are often catastrophic. Cars that collide with the side or rear of a semi, which usually has a clearance of about 4 feet, can slide under the truck, shearing off the roof of the car and brutalizing the humans within.

When a person biking or walking gets knocked down in a collision with a semi-truck, they may be crushed by the rear wheels of the vehicle, turning an injury crash into a fatality. In 2020, 22% of all fatal crashes in the U.S. were single-vehicle collisions involving large trucks. 

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety ran crash tests showing how truck side guards can protect people in a car during a crash.

If you still have any doubts about the human toll of our failure to require guards to prevent underride crashes, the Institute for Safer Trucking’s memorial page has stories of fatalities that could have been prevented by rear or side guards.

A $1,000 fix

Prices for tractor-trailers start at around $70,000 and can be more than $150,000. The cost to install side guards: $1,000 to $3,000 per trailer. More than half the major truck manufacturers offer the option to include side guards when ordering a trailer. And that’s not even a true accounting of the cost because side guards can have aerodynamic benefits that save thousands of dollars in diesel fuel, more than returning the investment in the first year. 

In addition, side guards can prevent snow and ice buildup. The EU has required side guards since 1994, and its trucking industry hasn’t suffered from the lower clearance.

Yet, despite a yearslong campaign for a federal requirement for truck side guards and an ongoing campaign by families of people killed in underride crashes, this simple, cost-effective regulation remains elusive due to industry opposition.

We call on the members of the Senate Transportation Committee to stand up for the lives of people biking, walking, and driving passenger cars, and pass the Safe Vehicles Save Lives Bill with the truck side guards provision intact.