Work Zone Awareness Week
Work zone crashes can be very costly and dangerous, often resulting in injury or even death. Studies of work zone crashes show that most can be avoided. Here are tips to help avoid these incidents.
NHTSA Denies Petition Urging Investigation
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), in a Federal Register notice published April 1, denied a petition from the Institute for Safer Trucking (IST) requesting an investigation of collisions that van-type semi-trailers experience with passenger vehicles and other vulnerable road users. According to IST, these crashes cause significant injuries or death because of the lack of side underride guards.
IST requested that NHTSA investigate a potential recall of semi-trailers lacking side underride guards even though currently there is no regulation requiring that manufacturers equip trailers with such guards. IST maintains that the lack of side underride guards is a safety defect in a semi-trailer’s design. NHTSA contended that it published an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM) in 2023 exploring the possibility of mandating side underrides on trailers and is currently in the process of reviewing comments received both for and against side underride guards.
The agency said it had also facilitated the Advisory Committee on Underride Protection (ACUP) examining crash data relating to side collisions. ACUP published a report in the summer of 2024 calling for stronger underrides on trailers even though a cost-benefit analysis showed costs substantially outweighing the benefits of such a mandate.
Work zone crashes can be very costly and dangerous, often resulting in injury or even death. Studies of work zone crashes show that most can be avoided. Here are tips to help avoid these incidents.
Non-Department of Transportation post-accident drug and alcohol testing potentially changes a non-liable accident into the detonator of a nuclear verdict.
Several lawsuits were filed challenging the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) independent contractor (IC) regulation enacted by the Biden Administration and the DOL’s Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su in early 2024.