Underride committee needs to work together for a common goal

Regardless of whether a person’s title is listed as a safety advocate, truck driver or industry expert, none of these people want to see crashes on the highway. All of these individuals travel, and all of them have family members and friends.

But that commonality seems to have been forgotten when it comes to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Advisory Committee on Underride Protection. The committee was created to provide recommendations to the U.S. Department of Transportation on how to reduce underride crashes and fatalities.

Many of the committee members represent safety groups and have long called for a side underride guard mandate on tractor-trailers. Meanwhile, those who work in the industry have cited operational hurdles, unintended consequences and data from NHTSA that says the annual cost of a mandate would be as much as $1.2 billion while saving an average of only 17.2 lives each year.

This division has led the committee to spend an inordinate amount of the meeting time debating and voting on procedural issues. In March, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association expressed concern about this in a letter to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

“Unfortunately, we are deeply concerned the committee has lost its commitment to working in a cooperative and collaborative manner, jeopardizing its ability to produce a fair, reputable and concise report in a transparent manner,” OOIDA wrote in the letter signed by President Todd Spencer.

Consensus and quorum

A considerable amount of time at the committee’s recent meetings has been spent on debating the definitions of consensus and quorum.

At the February meeting, the committee argued over the definition of a consensus. The members, who are largely proponents of a side underride guard mandate, argued that a simple majority would suffice as a consensus even though previous DOT committees have required thresholds of 75% or higher.

Inexplicably, the committee was then able to use a simple majority vote to determine that the committee would need only a simple majority to include something in their “consensus” recommendations to the DOT. Explaining it another way, it’d be like if Congress failed to meet the two-thirds threshold needed to override a presidential veto and then used a simple majority vote to lower the veto threshold.

To make matters worse, many of the same committee members came together at the March meeting with a plan to reduce the quorum requirement from 75% to 51%. It prompted concerns that the changes were aimed at silencing the members of the committee with the minority opinion.

“We seem to be defining new words to meet our situation,” committee member and truck driver Doug Smith said. “A quorum is 75%. It’s not 50%. It’s not a new definition. And a consensus is not a simple majority.”

OOIDA said the actions have forced it to question the committee’s commitment to fairness and transparency.

“Likely by design, these motions have created a scenario in which a committee deliberately designed to identify recommendations that garner broad agreement may instead advance recommendations that are supported by only a fraction of its members,” OOIDA wrote. “This is wholly unacceptable and a dramatic departure from previous advisory committee work conducted under the oversight of the U.S. Department of Transportation.”

The DOT needs to take a more active role in this committee in order to regain fairness and transparency and so that the members can work together to provide safe and practical recommendations. LL