Mar 5, 2009 8:57 pm US/Central
Experts: Truck-Car Collisions Can Be Made Safer
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
You may never look at semi-trucks the same way again after watching this report.
A grieving mother contacted the 2 Investigators after her daughter was killed in a preventable truck accident. Her efforts to get federal regulators to create new safety measures had been ignored. That's when she turned to Pam Zekman for help in stopping a road danger.
It's one of the scariest sights for a motorist: You're eye-level with a semi trailer, and your car is heading for a collision.
Like the accident on I-94 that killed a newly engaged couple that was driving to a Thanksgiving dinner.
"The roads were icy, and their car slid underneath the long side of the trailer," said Lois Sadigh, mother of one of the victims.
Twenty-six-year-old Roya Sadigh was killed. Four years later, her mother is still haunted by the loss.
"It's an ache in the heart that never goes away," she said. "It's just sadness."
They're called side underride accidents. That's when a car crashes underneath the trailer of a semi-truck. Oftentimes, the massive wheels crush the car and whoever's in it.
A year after Roya Sadigh died, there was a similar accident on the Northwest Tollway near Hoffman Estates.
And there was one last year in Gary, Ind. Just before the driver was about to exit I-80, her car collided with a truck alongside her.
Yolandria Davis, the 24-year-old mother of two children, was on her way to work.
Did she stand a chance?
"No -- she was killed instantly," her mother, Charisse Davis, said. "From my understanding, her neck was broke."
There are no records on the number of side underride accidents but truck safety experts estimate that hundreds die each year. As for survivors, truck safety expert Byron Block says this: "Close to about 1,000 a year survive in side underride accidents but are severely and permanently disabled."
Like Zhen Ming Chen. He's been in a coma since 2006, when the car he was riding in turned a corner and collided with a truck.
"The prognosis is poor and the hope of any kind of recovery is slim to none," Chen's attorney, Scott Blumenshine, said.
Ten years ago, federal regulations went into effect requiring rear guards on most new semi-truck trailers. But nothing was done to provide similar guards on the sides of the trailers.
They're needed, says Joan Claybrook, a former federal highway safety official.
"I think the Department of Transportation has been truly negligent in its failing to address this issue," she said.
The trucking industry opposes sideguards, saying they would weigh too much and cost too much.
"It's not true," counters Gerald Donaldson, a safety advocate. "It's a generic argument of the trucking industry that anything that somehow takes away from payload is illegitimate as a safety approach."
One legitimate approach, he suggests, is a sideguard made by a company that ran crash tests showing what happens without a guard. A stops the car from going underneath.
"Roya Sadigh's life would've been saved with side guards," Block, one of the safety experts, said.
Now, Lois Sadigh is trying to do something by paying for billboards to warn others about the danger.
"If it can save just one life, it'll be worth it," she said.
She and Charisse Davis hope the deaths of their daughters will prompt action.
Trucking industry officials declined a request for an on-camera interview. A spokeswoman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says the sides of trailers would need to be significantly re-designed and strengthened to make a guard useful -- a claim safety experts deny.
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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