Modern cars are remarkably good at protecting people. Crumple zones, airbags, and reinforced passenger compartments made of modern high strength materials mean that many highway-speed crashes that would have been fatal a generation ago are now usually survivable. But one kind of crash defeats nearly all of those protections: the underride crash, in which a car slides beneath a tractor-trailer.
In an truck underride crash, the trailer bed — which sits roughly at windshield height on most passenger cars — passes over the car’s hood and strikes the passenger compartment directly. The crumple zones never engage. The airbags may never matter. It is among the most devastating collisions on the road, and federal regulators have known about it for a very long time.
A danger regulators have studied since the 1950s
Rear underride guards — the steel bars hanging beneath the back of trailers — have been required in some form for decades. Sometimes called “ICC bars,” they are also commonly called “Mansfield bars,” after the actress Jayne Mansfield, who was killed in a rear underride crash in 1967. Federal standards were strengthened in 1998, and in 2022 the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued a final rule upgrading the strength requirements so that rear guards must protect occupants of a compact car striking the back of a trailer at 35 miles per hour.
The sides of trailers are, unfortunately, a different story. There is no federal requirement for side underride guards on trailers. NHTSA has researched the issue for years, sought public comment on a possible side-guard requirement in 2023, and convened an advisory committee on underride protection. Safety advocates, including families who lost loved ones in truck underride crashes, have pushed for side guards for decades, while segments of the trucking industry have raised concerns about cost, weight, and feasibility. But so far no side-guard rule has been adopted.
Government auditors have also found that underride deaths are likely undercounted, because police crash reports do not always record whether a car went under a trailer. The true toll of these crashes may be considerably higher than official statistics suggest.
What this means in a Georgia truck wreck case
Truck underride cases are legally complex, and they are rarely as simple as “the car hit the truck, so the car is at fault.” Common scenarios include a trailer parked on or backing across a dark roadway without proper lights or reflective tape; a slow-moving truck pulling out of a side road or driveway into highway-speed traffic; and rear guards that were missing, damaged, rusted, or improperly repaired — a violation of federal maintenance rules. In some cases, the trailer’s manufacturer may bear responsibility for a guard design that could not withstand a foreseeable crash, which brings product liability law into play alongside ordinary negligence.
Georgia follows a comparative negligence rule: an injured person can still recover damages if they were less than 50 percent at fault, with the recovery reduced by their share of fault. So even where the car struck the truck, the case may turn on why — visibility, conspicuity tape, lighting, parking decisions, and the condition of the underride guard itself. Those questions require preserving the trailer, the guard, and the electronic evidence quickly, before repairs erase the answers.
If you have lost a loved one or suffered serious injuries in a truck underride or other tractor-trailer crash in Georgia, an experienced trial lawyer can evaluate the case at no cost. Call (404) 254-6622.