These Trailer Crash Tests Show Underride Guards Can Save Lives

This fact was brought to light once more recently when the now infamous Autopilot crash saw a Tesla Model S slide right under a trailer that was perpendicular to the road, cutting its roof clean off and tragically leaving the sole occupant of the vehicle no chance.

Being the first fatal crash involving Tesla's Autopilot semi-autonomous driving feature, it was this aspect that made most of the headlines, but under certain circumstances, a car in the hands of a human driver could have had the same grim fate. The reasons are easily identifiable, but as it so often happens, it takes a tragedy to highlight there is a problem.

This isn't rocket science. Cars are built to mitigate crashes among themselves and certain stationary objects (like the pole test, for example), and to do that they have crumple zones, seatbelts, and airbags. But for these measures to be efficient, the impact needs to happen at one end of the car. If the nose gets under the obstacle and it's the windshield that comes crashing into whatever it is it's hitting, the chances of survival for those inside are virtually null.

You'd think this is common sense and that somebody would enforce stricter rules for a type of vehicles that are so ubiquitous on American roads: the semi trucks and, more precisely, their trailers. And yet not all of them are equipped with these underride guards. Most have them at the back, but the sides are wide open, and even though a collision from the left or right is less likely to happen, we've just been proven they're not impossible.

This video shows a series of tests conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) back in 2013 on a few trailers equipped with a rear underride guard. While the test didn't even consider the possibility of a side impact, it showed something even more alarming: even when present, some of these simple devices don't provide the necessary protection (especially in the case of a small overlap).