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The City of Seattle
Ordinance /
Council Bill /
title
An ordinance relating to City contracts; requesting the development of new recommended requirements for truck lateral protective devices that would be applicable to City contractors; requesting consideration of recommendations for complementary safety equipment; and describing specific dimensions for all requested recommended requirements.
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Recitals:
A traffic safety program is a strategy for significantly reducing traffic fatalities and severe injuries while increasing safe, healthy, and equitable mobility.
A traffic safety program is both proactive and responsive, emphasizing infrastructure and policies that minimize the risk of severe injuries or fatalities.
Truck lateral protective devices, commonly known as truck side guards or underride guards, are vehicle-based safety devices designed to keep pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorcyclists from being run over by a large truck’s rear wheels in a side-impact collision.
Nationally, bicyclist fatalities due to a traffic accident have risen over 50 percent in the past decade, and although about one percent of all trips are bicycling trips, bicyclists make up almost three percent of traffic fatalities, and most such fatalities involve motor vehicles.
While large trucks comprise four percent of registered vehicles, a recent study found that they were involved in approximately eight percent of pedestrian fatalities and 11 percent of bicyclist fatalities. Another study found that 32 percent of bicyclist and pedestrian fatalities from impacts with large trucks occurred after an initial impact with the side of the truck.
Truck lateral protective devices have been required by many jurisdictions internationally, beginning in 1979 in Japan, and studies have found that they reduce the fatality rate for bicyclist and pedestrian impacts with large trucks. After the...
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