It's time to make side guards mandatory on every truck in North America
And now that Olivia Chow is mayor, we should start in Toronto.
In November 2011, I was one of 1500 people riding our bikes to where Jenna Morrison was killed in a classic “right hook,” sucked under the rear wheels of a truck turning right. It was not my first ride; that was when a rowing buddy at Hanlan Boat Club, Hubert van Tol, was killed by a dump truck, and I rode to where he was killed to see a ghost bike installed by Advocacy for Respect for Cyclists (ARC). I have been to many of these rides since and have even written ARC into my will in the likelihood that I get killed this way.
Since then, I have often written about side guards and have been taking photos of them every time I travel.
After Jenna was killed, the Member of Parliament for Trinity-Bellwoods, Olivia Chow, once again introduced a petition to the House of Commons, speaking in question period:
“Every year, Canadian cyclists and pedestrians die needlessly when they are sucked under the back wheels of large trucks. Twenty-five years ago in Europe, truck side guards were made mandatory. As a result, cyclist deaths in Britain were cut by 61 per cent. Having side guards may have saved the life of Jenna Morrison.”
She introduced a motion:
We call upon the government of Canada to introduce a regulation under the Motor Vehicle Safety Act requiring aerodynamic sideguards for trucks and trailers to prevent cyclists, motorcyclists and pedestrians from being pulled under the wheels of these vehicles.
In 2013 she was at it again, wondering, “I don’t know how many more cyclists and pedestrians need to be trapped, seriously injured or die under the wheels of trucks, Side guards on trucks save lives.”
Chow’s and other motions were consistently rejected by the Conservative and Liberal governments, with the ministry saying:
Based on an analysis of fatal collisions in Canada, there were an average of two cyclist and approximately four pedestrian fatalities per year that occurred in collisions involving the sides of large trucks and trailers. While any such loss of life is tragic, this represents fewer than 4% of the total number of cyclist fatalities and less than 1% of the total number of pedestrian fatalities involving motor vehicle collisions over that time period.
It’s just a few people; not worth worrying about! Oh, and it isn’t our problem; let’s blame the cities.
Municipalities also have the responsibility to ensure their infrastructure accommodates for the safe transportation of all road users. For example, it is up to municipalities where to design for bike lanes and wider streets where there is a demonstrated need.
Well, OK, Olivia Chow is now the Mayor of Toronto. She should immediately make side guards a requirement for every truck operating in the City of Toronto.
One of the many excuses for not mandating side guards was that the freight business is international, and the Americans don’t require side guards. However, a new investigative report by ProPublica and FRONTLINE has found that truck industry lobbyists have fought the introduction of side guards for years.
Records show the agency often deferred to the wishes of the trucking industry, whose lobbyists repeatedly complained that simple safety measures would be prohibitively expensive and do lasting damage to the American economy.
The industry eventually lost the fight to stop requirements for rear under-ride guards, but continued to fight to stop side guards. In 2017, the Department of Transportation was working on regulations requiring side guards and the American Trucking Associations got busy, and got all of the recommendations for side guards removed. They had help from skeptical NHTSA officials like Shashi Kappa:
Kuppa and other NHTSA officials reviewed the draft report and challenged the researchers’ conclusions. Kuppa and her colleagues believed installing the guards would cost $600 to $4,500 for each vehicle and would save a maximum of 18 lives annually. She concluded the expense was not worth it, given the low number of lives saved.”
It should be noted that even the ATA, which objected to side guards on transport trailers that mostly operate on the highway, “they can see the need for side guards on trucks that spend most of their time in the city on city streets.” Also, these cost arguments that both the American and Canadian government use are specious. As Edward Keenan wrote in the Grid in 2011:
This is indicative of our cruel disregard, as a society, for the safety of cyclists. My family car contains close to $1,000 in child safety seats, which are required by law, in addition to about $1,000 worth of mandatory front-seat airbags and a couple of hundred dollars worth of seat-belt equipment. Just over a decade ago, all playground equipment in half of Toronto’s schools was torn out and replaced at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars per school because of safety concerns, even though there had never been a reported death or serious injury in a Toronto playground.
Clearly, we feel that schoolchildren and drivers and passengers of cars are worth spending a lot of money to protect. Meanwhile, the cost of side guards for trucks, possibly less than the cost of filling one with diesel fuel, is too high.
So here we are in 2023, and Olivia Chow is Mayor. We know from ProPublica that the number of deaths from under-rides has been underestimated and the cost of side guards overestimated and that the industry reviewed the regulations before they were published and all references to sideboards removed. We know that the Canadian government lazily just parrots what the American regulators say.
So let’s remember Jenna Morrison and Olivia Chow’s work in Parliament and, finally, make side guards mandatory.
Most of my posts on Treehugger on the subject of side guards and truck safety were killed in various updates, but I grabbed a few when I started archiving to save what I could:
Another Cyclist Dies Because North American Trucks Don't Have Sideguards
Canadian Government Once Again Rejects Side Guards on Trucks
Another Cyclist Gets the Right Hook: It's Time for Sideguards on Trucks in North America
The Real Problem With the NTSB's Mandatory Bike Helmet Recommendation
Mercedes Econic Urban Truck Shows How Good Design Can Save Lives
It's Time for the Construction Industry to Prioritize People Who Walk or Bike
Side rails have been mandatory on almost all trucks for a long time in Europe (yes even in the UK) - logging always has an exception due to the likelihood of damage and the fact they don't really operate in urban environments. Tbh, it didn't really surprise me when I found out they are not in NA, as the trucking lobby is so huge. These are simple safety standards which saves lives - some of the trucking companies which work a lot in urban environments have gone further still, installing radar embedded in the the siderails specifically to detect cyclists and pedestrians in the drivers blinds spots, giving the drivers warning, and sometimes as I understand it applying the brakes (autonomous radar, usually on the front only, braking is now compulsory on all new cars/vans/trucks in the EU and UK). Please catch up NA and save some lives.
There was a wonderful campaign a few years ago by the mother of a woman who was killed in similar incident. The mother perused the company for some time, collecting evidence of the risk of fatalities, eventually ending up on the board of the trucking company (Cemex, operating concrete trucks primarily in unban environments) as a safety advisor. Cemex is now a leader in pedestrian and cyclist safety - they went out of their way to make their trucks as safe as possible, so we can't argue its about money, it's about public responsibility as an operator.
Regarding the fact that some people think that xero risk is unachievable, possibly true, but does that mean that we shouldn't set the target at zero, and see how close we can get. Side rails are an important step in this, but so is driver training. The Fleet Operator Training Scheme (FORS) here in the UK demands that drivers spend time cycling in urban environments to let them understand the vulnerability of being on a bike in a city - a huge step and has led some serious improvements in accident records. Many of the major construction projects demand that their operators are FORS certified.
I am sorry that you have lost friends, Lloyd. Truly. But I cannot understand your rage.
Lloyd, you among most people do understand that zero Risk is unachievable. It's the old 80/20 Rule combined with the Law of Diminishing Returns that means that the last 0.001% (which is the level you're talking about) is extremely expensive.
Am I being an apologist for the trucking industry? No. I'm being a realist concerning effort and costs after having done my fair stints managing large projects and getting that last iota done sucks up a lot of time and cash.
The sad fact is that people die no matter what is done. Your zero risk post back at TH was quite the spiel that zero deaths was obtainable. I posit it's impossible because of the Law of Big Numbers as accidents DO happen regardless how much is spent on risk mitigation.
Your response?
All that said,