The driver of a grey Mercedes Benz crashed into a tanker trailer and ended up underneath the truck Friday morning.
The accident happened around 9:30 a.m. along I-75 northbound near Miami Gardens Drive and impacted traffic for a few hours until it was cleared.
These types of accidents where a car slides beneath a large truck or trailer are called “underride crashes” and the federal government is trying to prevent them from happening.
In 2022, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration passed new rules that require rear impact guards on trailers and semi-trailers with enough strength to protect drivers in passenger cars. Drivers have until June of next year to comply with this rule or they could face hefty fines.
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“The regulations call for these underride guards to prevent that and if they’re done properly, they should prevent tragedies,” said Eddie Olivera, a personal injury attorney in South Florida.
Crash test video by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety shows the difference in crash results when a truck has an improved underride guard and when a truck doesn’t.
“The underride guards are put in place by the Department of Transportation or DOT and these interstate trucks are regulated to avoid the tragedies of vehicles coming from behind and getting smashed underneath from the rear,” Olivera said.
NHTSA estimates that underride guards are 85% effective in preventing serious injuries in underride crashes at speeds of 64 mph or less.
“It should prevent a vehicle, especially a small vehicle from getting caught underneath. That’s where a lot of the deaths were happening in these 18 wheelers pre 1970s, 1960s," Olivera said. "That’s the whole purpose of the regulations of the under guard rails to stop that, but if someone is coming over 100 mph, there’s not much that the guardrail can do."
Based on NHTSA’S Fatal Accident Reporting System Database, in 2021 seven fatal crashes in Miami-Dade and Broward were rear-end collisions involving large trucks, with 81 across Florida.
Nationwide, NHTSA data from 2021 shows that more than 400 people died in underride crashes.
It’s unknown if the semi-truck from Friday’s crash had underride protections in place or how fast the Mercedes was going. Investigators have not released the names or conditions of the people involved in the crash as the cause is under investigation.
