Trump’s NHTSA nominee raises concerns among truck safety advocates

WASHINGTON — Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy promised at his Senate nomination hearing a Department of Transportation that would be “data-driven and safety-driven,” but truck safety advocates are concerned that President Donald Trump’s pick to lead one of Duffy’s modal agencies may not be on the same page.

Jonathan Morrison, who has been nominated to be administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, was chief counsel at NHTSA during the first Trump administration when the agency had allegedly been involved in suppressing key crash data.

Safety advocates believe that the data, which was part of a $200,000 research study conducted at Volpe National Transportation Systems Center and paid for by DOT, should have been used to inform an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to determine whether a rule is needed to require truck trailers be outfitted with sideguards to prevent cars from sliding underneath, injuring or killing passengers.

The proposed rulemaking, published in April 2023 during the Biden administration, concluded that the costs to the trucking industry of such a requirement – estimated to climb as high as $1.2 billion – outweighed life-saving benefits.

That would not have been the case, however, if data from the DOT-funded study, which looked at the potential for saving the lives of pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcyclists (also known as vulnerable road users) – had been incorporated into the rulemaking, safety advocates assert. And because it was a federally funded study, they contend DOT was obligated to include it for consideration within the rulemaking.

But that obligation was compromised, according to a 2023 ProPublica investigation, which alleged a “cozy relationship” among NHTSA, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the American Trucking Associations whereby DOT allowed ATA to influence the Volpe research.

Emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by Marianne Karth, a crash victim advocate, revealed that Morrison was among top officials at NHTSA and FMCSA informed of or invited to DOT meetings in 2019 and 2020 when the Volpe report was discussed, and ultimately revised, to exclude the vulnerable road user cost-benefit analysis.

“Whether or not you believe, as I do, that underride crashes should be prevented through regulations, everyone should agree that suppressing taxpayer-financed safety research is abhorrent and unacceptable,” Karth told FreightWaves.

Karth, who was a member of NHTSA’s Advisory Committee on Underride Protection (ACUP), created a website devoted to getting a federal mandate for underride guards after her daughters were killed in an underride crash in 2013.

Quon Kwan, a retired FMCSA project manager who proposed and sponsored the Volpe study while he was at the agency, wrote in a statement provided to ACUP last year that “suppressing this research was unacceptable and wrong.”

“A new semitrailer costs tens of thousands of dollars, and adding a side guard to it costs mere pennies on the dollar to save an innocent victim’s life. I would pay a penny for an engineering solution.”

In a 410-page biennial report sent by ACUP to Congress and DOT last year, committee members alleging data suppression by NHTSA recommended that the agency reissue a revised rulemaking that takes into account underride victim categories, including pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcyclists.

NHTSA declined to comment on allegations related to the Volpe study, or on the prospects for issuing an updated proposed rulemaking to include additional cost and benefit data.

NTSB, insurers questioned NHTSA’s analysis

Side underride crash test. (Credit: IIHS)

The side-guard rulemaking, which is currently on hold at NHTSA, estimated that 17 lives would be saved and 69 serious injuries would be prevented each year if underride guards were installed on all trailers under a new standard.

That estimation translates into lifetime costs of equipping new trailers and semi-trailers with side underride guards “six to eight times” the estimated safety benefits, according to NHTSA’s proposed rulemaking. A rule that cannot show benefits outweighing costs has little chance of mustering federal approval.

The National Transportation Safety Board, which has also underscored concerns related to NHTSA’s underreporting of vulnerable road users, saw other problems with the proposed rulemaking.

“NHTSA only calculated potential safety benefits for about 20% of fatal crashes in which NHTSA estimated that the passenger vehicle was traveling under 40 mph,” NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy wrote in comments filed in 2023 in response to the rulemaking. “For crashes where the estimated speed was over 40 mph, NHTSA’s analysis assumed that a side underride guard would have no effectiveness.”

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, an independent nonprofit that was also represented on ACUP, estimated in its own rulemaking comments that the number of lives that could be saved by requiring side underride guards is as much as 10 times more than NHTSA’s estimates.

Trucking interests push back

Because of a sharp division among members of ACUP on assessing the need for sideguards, the biennial report sent to Congress and DOT had to be split into separate sections – a “majority report” that included the allegations of data suppression at NHTSA and a “minority report” by members who said such allegations should be disregarded.

“Mr. Kwan appears to be a disgruntled former employee who is upset because, he says, a report ultimately published concerning lateral protection devices or pedestrian guards differed from the version on which he worked while employed at the FMCSA,” Jeff Bennett, an ACUP member representing trailer manufacturers, stated in the report.

“In his letter, Mr. Kwan suggests – without any evidence – that individuals at NHTSA may have been unduly influenced into changing the conclusions of the report as Mr. Kwan worked on it. As the Biennial Report notes, after receiving the unsolicited letter, NHTSA ‘did not allow the ACUP to discuss or hear his statement and referred the matter to the Department’s Office of Inspector General.’”

In an email statement to FreightWaves last June, the agency said it was “aware of allegations made by a previous FMCSA employee and has submitted the matter to the Department’s Office of the Inspector General for review. The purpose of this [side underride guard proposed rulemaking] and the rulemaking process is to gather all relevant information, not to suppress it.”

DOT’s inspector general’s office, which was asked to investigate the matter, has yet to report publicly on the allegations.

Lewie Pugh, executive vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association – also represented on ACUP – told FreightWaves he believes that too many potential unintended consequences resulting from a side underride guard requirement could make highways less, not more, safe.

“If we used the money it would cost the industry [to comply with a mandate] instead for training truckers properly, paying truckers properly and providing them more parking to allow for a decent night’s sleep, it would pay huge dividends in highway safety, and everyone knows it,” Pugh told FreightWaves in an interview.

“But nobody in Washington seems to have the guts to get this stuff done.”