Gadgetory

94% of fatalities that occur when cars and trucks tangle are people in the car duh and one of the nastiest kinds of those accidents is the rear under-eye when you slam into the back of one of those big semi trailers a collision so nasty it became this iconic scene in that movie from the early 70s the 7-ups you see that one with Roy Scheider that scene doesn't leave your memory very quickly you don't want to get into one of those luckily if you do happen to rear-end a semi these days there's almost certainly gonna be this big bar that hangs down on on two uprights you've seen these there.the underride guard and that'll keep your car largely from submarining underneath the vehicle but if you hit one dead-on from the rear odds are pretty good your car's front crumple zone is going to engage it and that's going to largely protect you inside your vehicle the federal government requires that the backs of semi-truck trailers have under ride guards to prevent vehicles from sliding underneath them in the event of a crash plus those guards vary widely in strength there's not a really good high standard across the industry some trailer makers build them real tough others don't and they collapse far too easily the weakest underwrite guard in our Test series was on I hon day trailer when this malibu struck the hyundai in the rear and a center impact at 35 miles per hour the guard was simply pushed out of the way the attachment bolts broke the damage to the Malibu was so severe that real people in this crash probably would have died now while about 12% of car truck fatalities are under ride rear-end collisions there's a whole big risk of side under ride if you come broadside under a trailer or hit that at like a 45-degree even as speeds as low as 35 miles an hour cars often submarine under the side of the underride guard and that's much rarer to see the kind of guards that prevent that they're much more common in Europe now things have been getting a lot better on those under ride guards first of all they used to be required to be I think 60 inches wide now I believe they have to be at least 94 inches wide up to I think 110 inches so there's a lot more width there to find the sweet spot and while many of the trailer manufacturers are doing a better job of voluntarily making them stronger there's been a petitioning of the federal government by the insurance industry to adopt a tougher Canadian standard that dates back to 2007 but again it's not mandatory in the US and some big trucks don't have an under ride guard at all because of the mechanical complexity of look at a dump truck for example because the bed has to tilt the underride guard would get in the way and clip the ground or the wheels similar for some of those big dump trailer semis you see so here's what the smarter driver does you allow more space as you're about to make a lane change out from behind a semi because the problem is is you're turning to look for a clear Lane what if that truck slows down a lot suddenly you're starting your lane change he's stopping down and you take a glancing blow on that underride guard it's the one you don't want to have you