Underride Crashes Are a Gruesome Mess More Than 50 Years in the Making

In 1967, Hollywood actress Jayne Mansfield was killed along with two friends when her driver rear-ended a tractor-trailer in heavy fog. It was the first high-profile accident involving underride incursion, and the incident spurred the first calls for safety measures that would prevent grisly underride accidents; rear underride guards, now mandatory, are still called Mansfield…

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Icy Conditions Blamed for Fiery Pileup

This year’s polar vortex is wreaking havoc with thermometers everywhere. Temperatures are whipsawing all over the country; some places are experiencing changes of nearly 50 degrees overnight. These drastic weather conditions are taking a toll on our health and safety. An accident in Maryland in mid-December showed just dangerous these drastic changes can be. The…

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While Feds Mull Speed Limits, Legislators Call for Safer Seats

As the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is considering a mandate that would limit big trucks to a nationwide speed limit, lawmakers are demanding immediate action on unsafe car seats. The two might seem unrelated, but an ongoing investigation by CBS found that the seats in passenger vehicles can fail in rear-end crashes and cause…

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Three Commercial Trucks Involved in Fiery I-77 Pileup

Road construction on I-77 in Chester County created stop-and-go traffic conditions that resulted in a fiery six-car pileup in early September. The multi-vehicle wreck closed the highway for more than 8 hours while first responders worked to literally put out fires and save more than a dozen victims. The accident was so large that the…

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Smaller Commercial Trucks Can Cause Fatal Accidents, Too

Truck accidents are always serious. The underlying cause varies; truck drivers can be distracted, fatigued, drunk or unlicensed, but the overriding cause is always the same. Big trucks cause big accidents. Commercial vans and small trucks can outweigh passenger vehicles by almost 10 times, while fully loaded tractor-trailers can be 40 times heavier than a…

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