Truckers have advised House and Senate leaders to avoid legislating based on a report they believe is deeply flawed, which suggests mandating new safety equipment for their vehicles.

In a letter to Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo., and Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., who head the House Transportation & Infrastructure and Senate Commerce committees respectively, Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA) President Todd Spencer criticized the recent Advisory Committee on Underride Protection (ACUP) biennial report sent to Congress. Spencer urged that the report should largely be disregarded.

The primary issue, according to OOIDA, is the lack of consensus on the data used for the recommendations. This disagreement led to the 16-member advisory committee splitting the report into majority and minority viewpoints. OOIDA board member Doug Smith represented the organization on ACUP.

“Safety advocacy representatives used their numerical advantage in the Committee to define ‘consensus’ as a simple majority, minimizing the opposing viewpoints of other ACUP participants,” Spencer wrote.

“OOIDA warned that allowing such an advantage to biased advocates would compromise the committee’s ability to produce a concise, data-driven report with broad support among participants and stakeholders.”

Spencer argued that the committee’s recommendations are expensive and impractical, having been approved by only a “slim majority” of ACUP participants.

“These motions faced significant opposition and should not form the basis for policy development,” he said. “Additionally, some parts of the majority report went beyond the panel’s authorized scope and often lacked empirical data or research to justify their inclusion.”

The most contentious section accused Department of Transportation officials of suppressing certain crash data.

According to safety and crash-victim advocates, omitting this data underestimated the benefits and overestimated the costs in the economic analysis of a side-guard rulemaking pending at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

“NHTSA should not move forward with potential new underride standards until further research, analysis, and testing are completed as directed in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law,” Spencer stated.

“The only recommendations that achieved true consensus among panel members were those involving enhancing research and reporting. These are the only parts of the final report that Congress and USDOT should seriously consider.”

In response, the Truck Safety Coalition (TSC), a crash victim advocacy group, highlighted that OOIDA’s call for more research before implementing side-guard equipment mandates “is literally the same recommendation made by the National Highway Safety Bureau 54 years ago,” TSC executive director Zach Cahalan told FreightWaves.

“Half a century of accepting gruesome deaths and debilitating injuries from side underride crashes is shameful and no longer acceptable to a majority of ACUP stakeholders.”

Cahalan added that the trucking industry often opposes any safety measures that increase business costs.

“TSC respectfully suggests that the voices of truck crash victims and survivors, who have no financial interest in this decision, should be given far greater credibility than those of owner-operators, corporate trucking, and manufacturers who profit from selling goods or services.”