The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's plan to mandate side underride guards may represent one of the costliest trucking mandates of all time. It's being carried out in the name of improved safety, but many in trucking contend it could have the exact opposite impact by leading to disaster on rail crossings.
NHTSA's Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking from April, which gathered more than 2,000 comments on the Federal Register, makes it clear that when the agency talks about mandating side underride guards, it has no idea how that would impact operational safety for commercial truck drivers.
"NHTSA did not take into consideration the practicability and feasibility of side underride guards on trailer and semitrailer operations," the ANPRM reads.
Operational concerns abound. For example, a broad coalition of rail and port associations asked for an exemption for intermodal chassis, which are commonly stacked -- something underride guards would prevent.
But perhaps the most serious safety concerns had to do with questions of ground clearance at rail crossings.
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