Underride guards on the sides of semi-trailers rather than aero side skirts can effectively prevent decapitation and other roof-shear/ crush injuries in a T-bone-type side collision with a passenger car, a new study has found.
In the study released today, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) ran two tests crashing a passenger sedan at 35 mph into the side of a 53-ft. dry van trailer. In one test, the trailer had an AngelWing side underride protection device, which on the surface looks similar to an aerodynamic skirt but has strong reinforcing beneath.
The passenger car in that test hit the side of the trailer but struck and was repelled as in a normal collision. The car's airbags and seat belts did what they're designed to do and restrained and protected the test dummies from the collision force.
In the second test, the passenger car hit the side of the trailer and kept going, shearing off part of its roof and wedging the car beneath the trailer. "In a real-world crash like this, any occupants in the car would likely sustain fatal injuries," the study authors concluded.
Installing underride guards like the AngelWing device made by AirFlow Deflector is an important safety upgrade for truck trailers, they advised, since nearly one out of five passenger vehicle occupants killed in two-vehicle collisions with heavy trucks died because the car went under the trailer in these kinds of roof-shear/ wedged-underneath wrecks.
AngelWing underride guard vs. aero side skirt
