Stoughton Trailer's chassis for container transport has qualified for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's (IIHS's) Toughguard award for superior underride protection.
The award was previously given to the company's dry vans and refrigerated vans, and now also applies to 53-ft., intermodal chassis built after April.
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"We're excited about the commitment that Stoughton has shown to preventing underride crashes," IIHS President David Harkey says. "Improving the safety of commercial vehicles is a key part of our 30x30 strategy, which targets a 30% reduction in road fatalities by 2030."
Underride guards that meet Toughguard criteria are more likely to withstand an impact, the IIHS says, reducing the severity of the crash. The institute says chassis-type trailers present a unique challenge when it comes to underride protection because that chassis, unlike a dry van or refrigerated van, is a ladder-like structure that lies between the trailers wheels to support the removable container.
The underride guard for that chassis required a completely new design, IIHS says. Instead of a vertical support attached to the trailer deck, the intermodal chassis guard features long, diagonal supports running from the guard's outboard ends to the chassis rails.
“The safety of the motoring public is a top priority for Stoughton,” says Scott Lubenow, senior director of Product Engineering and R&D at Stoughton Trailers. “We’re proud to become the first trailer manufacturer to achieve the Toughguard award on an intermodal chassis, another example of how our team remains driven to ensure that our trailer products provide superior protection against underride crashes.”
IIHS says its requirements are more stringent than even the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA's) updated rules from 2022.
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"A major weakness of the federal regulation is that in the required test, the underride guard is bolted to a universal testing rig intead of an actual trailer," IIHS Senior Test Coordinator Sean O'Malley says. "When we were developing the Toughguard program, we found that many underride guards that survived testing attached to NHTSA's rig broke off when attached to the trailer they were built to be used on, either because the attachment points on the trailer failed or the bolts did."
In contrast, IIHS evalutes underride guards on the trailers they were designed for. A midsize car crashes into the back of a parked trailer at 35 mph in three configurations: hitting the trailer with its full width, a 50% overlap and a 30% overlap. To earn the award, the guard must prevent underride in all three configurations.
