By R. Bruce Wright
While I was making a consultation visit not long ago to a utility insured in this program, the safety contact there told me about a recent vehicle accident they experienced. One of their crews was driving along on a main road in a large bucket truck when a passenger car pulled out from the right, directly into the truck’s path. Apparently the elderly driver of the sedan did not look, or somehow did not see, the bucket truck! With no time to react or avoid a collision, the line crew’s truck smacked into the left side rear corner of the other car, doing devastating damage to the other car, along with severe damage to their bucket truck and its mounted equipment.
After securing the scene and summoning help, a crew member contacted HQ and the investigation process was immediately set in motion, since the damage and injuries were quite extensive. Happily, none of the members of the line crew suffered extremely severe injuries, although they did not emerge unscathed. Some of the men suffered cuts, bruises and even broken bones. Unfortunately, the folks in the other car were far worse off.
As part of the initial documentation, a number of photographs were taken, showing the vehicles, their positions, and the extent of the damage. When reviewing the photos, the safety officer noticed something quite puzzling. Despite the very significant front-end damage suffered by the line truck, the truck's airbags had not deployed. In fact, some of the crew injuries clearly would not have occurred if the airbags had inflated and kept the men from striking the wheel and dashboard of the truck. Thinking that there might be a major problem, he investigated further and learned something else that surprised him even more. The truck, like all of their large line trucks, was not equipped with airbags! But why not?
Many of us have become so accustomed to the fact that airbags are now standard equipment in all of the cars and light trucks we see every day that we may not realize the governmental standards that have mandated airbags do not apply to every vehicle in use, and in particular for our purposes here, not to heavy trucks! The rules in effect today state that:
“Each truck, bus, or multipurpose vehicle with a GVWR of 8,500 pounds or less and an unloaded vehicle weight of 5,500 pounds or less manufactured on or after September 1, 1998 shall comply with the requirement … by means of an inflatable restrain system at the driver’s and right front passenger’s position.”
So, the regulations in effect at the time of this writing require that only trucks with a GVWR weight of 8,500 lb or less include airbags as standard equipment. Regulations covering heavier trucks provide manufacturers with options. These options require either airbags, or a seatbelt restraint system, as described in the regulations. (For those who are interested in reading the entire regulation, it is law 571.208, Standard No. 208, Occupant crash protection.)
Again, as of this date, the manufacturers have the freedom to offer airbags as optional equipment, but they are not required to do so. At least some manufacturers do not yet offer airbags, even as optional extra-cost equipment, on their heavier trucks.
The purpose of this article is not to tell you that airbags should be installed on all of your heavy trucks, but to make sure you realize that this equipment is not automatically provided. As you decide whether or not airbags are important in heavy trucks, you will want to evaluate the risks these trucks present. It is clearly true that in collisions between vehicles, the occupants of heavy trucks are certainly less exposed to injury than are occupants of much smaller vehicles. They are not, however, invulnerable. If a heavy truck collides with a passenger car, the car will likely suffer the worst of the damage, but not all of it! And if a truck strikes an immobile object (such as a bridge abutment or a building), collides with another vehicle of comparable size, or is subject to upset or overturning, the passengers are exposed to the possibility of severe injury.
The lesson presented by the incident that started this article is simply this-
If you decide that you want to have the heavy trucks in your fleet equipped with airbags, just as the cars and light trucks are, remember that you will have to specify this requirement in the bid specs!