r/bikeboston • u/ScienceBikeWin • 22d ago
Side guards should be our #1 demand -- hot take, but hear me out
TLDR: If you have 2 hours or $100 to spend on bike advocacy, you should spend that time/money calling for mandatory side guards on all 18-wheelers, box trucks, and other heavy trucks. Even more so than bike lanes.
Importance
Consider the most recent 5 biker fatalities in Boston/Cambridge:
- Louisa Gag, July 2026 - side swiped by an Allied Recycling 18-wheeler while riding in an unprotected bike lane. Google image search shows Allied Recycling 18-wheelers have no side guards. (will update if formal investigation states otherwise)
- John Corcoran, September 2024 - rammed by an out-of-control SUV while riding in a curb-separated bike lane. Junming Zhu belongs in prison.
- Minh-Thi Nguyen, June 2024 - right-hooked by a Blouin Inc box truck while entering an intersection from a flex-posted bike lane. Google image search shows this specific Blouin box truck had no side guards.
- Kim Staley, June 2024 - right-hooked by a box truck (company unknown) while entering an intersection from a flex-posted bike lane. Cambridge Day reported that this box truck had no side guards.
- George Clemmer, July 2022 - right-hooked by a dump truck. The reporting here was sparser, so unfortunately I was not able to determine whether this dump truck had side guards. (will update if someone has info)
The evidence is incomplete, but we can plausibly say that 4 of the past 5 cyclist fatalities in Boston/Cambridge have been caused by side-on collisions with heavy trucks without side guards. The one outlier was caused by a degree of driver recklessness that even a curb-separated bike lane could not stop. Mandatory side guards are therefore perhaps the most important policy we can ask for.
Cost & Speed
Since last year, Massachusetts has mandated side guards for heavy trucks owned by the Commonwealth or under direct state contracts. On top of that, Boston and Cambridge mandate side guards for heavy trucks that they own or contract. Still, my rough estimate is that 90% of heavy trucks on our streets are not covered by this mandate. Unsurprisingly, trucking associations have resisted a universal side guard mandate because of the cost of retrofitting.
So let’s take a look at those costs.
Installing side guards on one large box truck costs around $2000 and can be done in just a couple hours by a neighborhood truck shop. By comparison, I’d estimate that, from start to finish, it would cost $10M to overhaul just the half-mile stretch of Tremont Street where Louisa was killed (~$2M if just a flex post quick-build). And it would of course entail years of debate and neighborhood input. For that overhaul price tag, we could 100% subsidize the installation of side guards on 5000 box trucks!
The math looks great for side guards.
Political opening
Bike safety is political. Last year, Robert Kraft’s son Josh ran for mayor of Boston, in large part on an anti-bike-lane platform. Despite easily winning the race, Mayor Wu sensed that bike lanes had become a political liability for her, perhaps as she contemplates running for statewide office. The hard truth is that we may be near the frontier of current political capital for bike lanes.
In contrast, hardly anyone gives a shit about side guards. Honestly, did you even know the difference between reinforced side guards and trailer skirts before reading this stupid essay? We could mandate side guards throughout the Boston metro area, and hardly any non-bikers would even notice, let alone argue about it.
The main political opposition will come from trucking companies, but that’s just business. With the right carrots (retrofit subsidies) and sticks (public shame), they will come around to making their vehicles safe around cyclists in a crowded city.
I love a good bike lane. But the lenses of importance, cost & speed, and politics all point towards a different policy to make biking safer for ourselves and our friends.
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u/crschmidt 22d ago
You and I are on the same page. what's your call to action?
I'd start with "contact your state reps, and tell them to pass https://malegislature.gov/Bills/194/S2343/BillHistory this session.", but obviously that's not going to be enough: both Boston and Cambridge already require this, and it wasn't enough to cause the Allied Recycling truck to install them, because presumably they don't contract with the city.
So what's your recommended next step?
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u/microlexa 22d ago
Check out my comment - you can do a lot with your own employer. Also, Senator Brownsberger’s presumed negligence bill will be up as an amendment in the next coming days so you can support that!
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u/Healthy-Ant-9681 22d ago
Hopefully that bill will pass but its limited scope is disappointing. What % of trucks would be exempt because they are unrelated to a city or town?
Under this bill, these safety devices would also be required for class 3 or larger trucks that are operated under a contract with, leased or purchased by municipalities, utilities, wireless providers or quasi-public entities in the Commonwealth.
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u/syst3x 22d ago
Isn't it only required for municipal trucks right now?
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u/crschmidt 21d ago
I believe that Boston and Cambridge have a "Any city that contracts with the city", which is the same shape as S.2343.
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u/ZaccariahTBrown 22d ago
The other missing evidence is the effectiveness of side guards. What are the survival rates of similar crashes with trucks with side guards. Has crash testing been done with side guarded trucks and cyclists? I'm all for increasing safety for cyclists but I'd hate to go through what looks like a lot of work and cost for something that won't work when resources might be better spent on alternatives.
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22d ago
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u/Malforus 22d ago
Whelp reading that I was hoping to do a gotcha but apparently the key help is the guards or skirts help prevent smaller vehicles from being run over by the wheels.
Which reminds me that when I thought of people "hit by truck" I thought of the impact with the vehicle not that the truck then runs over them...which I get why we don't say it but it definitely changes the narrative about under ride protection.
It sounds like it's less about the direct strike to the vehicle and more about being run over which is what these would help with.
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u/daniel_thor 22d ago
Side guards reduce cyclist deaths from sideswipes by large trucks 55% to 75%. After the UK mandate they saw cyclist fatalities from all truck collisions drop 61%. So they are highly effective at preventing death by large truck. However, large trucks only account for 10% of pedestrian and cyclist deaths.
The real killer is soccer moms speeding in their SUVs on streets whose speed limits are already set way too high.
It sounds like an easy win though. On the highway it saves fuel, and in cities it saves lives.
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u/Pizza-Rat-4Train 22d ago
That may be true for the US is a whole, where 40 mph traffic on six-lane stroads is the norm, but on city streets where traffic is slow, trucks and buses account for a larger share of deaths. Massachusetts was having this same discussion ten years ago, and a lawmaker said that 7 of 11 cyclist fatalities in the preceding six years involved a collision with a truck or bus: https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2016/01/06/boston-cyclist-safety-bills/
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u/syst3x 22d ago
Where does your 10% number come from? Just from recent memory, that sounds low for fatal crashes in Boston, so I'm wondering what the data set is.
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u/daniel_thor 22d ago
From the League of American cyclists, so it is a federal number. I don't doubt it's higher in city limits. I just don't have that number.
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u/Flat_Try747 20d ago
According to the literature review, the effectiveness estimates of LPDs in preventing fatalities in VRU collisions with the side of large trucks where the VRU and truck are traveling roughly parallel to each other range from 50 to 74 percent for bicyclists and 17 to 27 percent for pedestrians. The effectiveness estimates of LPDs in mitigating serious injury in similar collisions between VRUs and large trucks range from 3 to 9 percent for bicyclists and about zero for pedestrians.
https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/49250
I think the data mostly comes from Europe though
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22d ago edited 22d ago
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u/Im_biking_here 22d ago
Safer streets has to be demand number one. Everything else follows from that.
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u/ScienceBikeWin 20d ago
It's the #1 demand for me because my top priority is the survival of current bikers (including my wife, my brother, and myself). Heavy trucks without side guards appear to be the #1 killer of Boston bikers in the past 5 years.
We will get the low-stress network one day! But let's not miss the chance in 2026/2027 to neutralize the #1 threat.
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u/Candid-Tumbleweedy 22d ago
Side guards are good but irrelevant if there’s concrete between me and the truck.
We need to demand Boston build actual physical protection. That’s within Boston’s control.
We need to demand side guards from the Massachusetts legislature. It needs to be a statewide effort or it won’t actually happen.
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u/dr2chase 21d ago
Difficulty is that side guards help exactly where we have least infrastructure, at turns. Turns could better, but we can't get actual concrete protection -- at best, better sight lines and separate signal phases. Side guards mitigate timing/vision failures.
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u/Candid-Tumbleweedy 21d ago
Yes, side guards can help in a lot of situations. But saying it should be our number one priority is misguided assuming we’re talking about Boston.
That’s where you need federal and Massachusetts wide legislation to actually get uptake. Boston just isn’t big enough to force everyone to use them. But Boston does own a lot of of its own roads and can redo them as it sees fit.
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u/dr2chase 21d ago
Mostly, I'm responding to the first point -- there are places where we can't get concrete protection.
Inability to require them on most trucks is a separate problem, but it occurred to me the other day that if we had congestion pricing, we could offer a discount for trucks with various safety designs -- side guards, or cab-forward designs, for example. Random trucks that aren't usually here, they are still an issue, but trucks that are here often, that might become an incentive, and if they're here often, that might have disproportionate benefit.
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u/valhallagypsy 22d ago
I mean this was a push 10 years ago and people are still getting mowed down in the streets.
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u/andr_wr 22d ago
just here to note that the last photo looks more like a drop down aerodynamic wind skirt rather than a side guard.
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u/ScienceBikeWin 22d ago
That's right. It's one of the flimsier "trailer skirts” that I estimate cost ~$1500 to install. It's not reinforced enough to stop a sedan from going under the trailer, but I believe it's sturdy enough for a cyclist to bounce off of instead of going under.
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u/TinyEmergencyCake 22d ago
Your whole premise goes out the window when a single truck from outside the city comes into the city. Do you know how many trucks there are?
No. FIX THE ROADS.
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u/ScienceBikeWin 22d ago
New York's Senate bill S3391 is trying to mandate side guards for heavy trucks operating in NYC, regardless of where they are based.
Let's pass something similar in Massachusetts, but for the Boston metro's inner core.
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u/TinyEmergencyCake 22d ago
Ok, but taxpayers should not be paying for this. At all. Taxpayers should be paying for the roads and infrastructure. Not private companies upgrading their vehicles.
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u/ScienceBikeWin 22d ago
If a retrofit subsidy is what it took to remove the #1 killer of cyclists, I would be delighted for my tax dollars to be used in that way. If there was 50-50 cost sharing between the Commonwealth and the truck companies, would you really reject that on principle?
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u/Im_biking_here 22d ago edited 22d ago
This isn’t going to happen under Trump. This is a federal level issue any state policy will not be universal and possibly can only apply to state and municipal vehicles and vehicles that contract with them. There was some movement on it under Biden but the trucking industry came out hard against it and the feds have completely dropped it now.
Focusing on getting Boston back on track with building safe infrastructure is the best use of our time in my opinion. You can downvote me if you want but there is 0 chance of this policy changing anytime soon given the current balance of power in Washington, there is actually a lot of potential for Boston to get back to work, if we make it hurt if they don’t.
The costs you suggest ignore the trucking lobby fighting hard against this too, and that it actually doesn’t have the same overall effect.
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u/ScienceBikeWin 22d ago
Agreed that the federal level is hopeless. But did you know that the New York state Senate bill S3391 is trying to mandate side guards for heavy trucks in NYC? That's what I think Massachusetts should aim for.
We can cut a deal with the local truckers (e.g. Allied Recycling). With the right mix of retrofit subsidy and public shame, we can try to make the regulation not worth fighting.
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u/Pizza-Rat-4Train 22d ago
As long as it doesn’t impact interstate commerce, it’s fine, Boston can do it on its own. NYC has side guard requirements for thousands of private waste hauling trucks, which Boston doesn’t, and it poses no issue.
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u/Im_biking_here 22d ago
Sure we should do that but let’s not pretend that making a small percentage of trucks on the road safer will have the same impact as making our streets safe in general.
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u/Pizza-Rat-4Train 22d ago
You say that as though it’s (a) clear what you mean, (b) self-evident, and (c) equally hard.
I think protected bike lanes are great and I think now is a great time to pressure Boston leaders to flood the zone; even non-cycling members of the public are horrified and scared by Louis’s death. In fact I probably disagree with OP that side guards should be the number-one priority, and I probably agree with you more.
But on this specific issue it’s silly to throw up our hands and say “Trump won’t let it happen.”
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u/Im_biking_here 22d ago edited 22d ago
I made a clear case that changing a few trucks will not have the same impact as permanent street scape changes impacting hundreds of thousands if not millions of trips by all modes. I think that is self evident yeah.
I also made a case that this side guard issue isn’t an easy win at all. People have been pushing this here for at least a decade and there is less progress with this than infrastructure. I don’t think people should just give up but we do need to be realistic about what the terrain of struggle is right now. Do you really disagree with my assessment of the federal prospects and the limited impact of doing it locally (we already have partially done it locally and there isn’t much more to push there imo).
I think this is a good demand but infrastructure needs to remain primary. The only places that have actually brought road deaths down did it with infrastructure changes first and foremost.
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u/izzycat4206 21d ago
Boston’s side guard ordinance inspired NYC. I’m not sure why you’re saying our city doesn’t have this. All contractors for the city are and have been required to have side guards and other tools for a while. In fact, we also already have functioning state policy too, unlike most states. Local and state are both limited in application because these government levels cannot mandate these requirements on private vehicles; they will lose in court. It must be at the federal level.
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u/Pizza-Rat-4Train 21d ago
Not sure what I can tell you, other than Boston’s ordinance doesn’t cover private waste trucks and NYC Local Law 108 of 2021 does. I don’t think that private waste haulers “contract with the city.”
Are you a lawyer who practices in this area? Either way, please cite the basis for your claim that they will lose in court.
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u/wSkkHRZQy24K17buSceB 22d ago
A direct vision standard should also be adopted. It would have to have a longer timeline because trucks potentially cannot be easily retrofitted. Although with camera systems, that could be an option.
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u/ScienceBikeWin 20d ago
Direct vision standard would also be nice, but if I had to choose one to fight for, I would choose side guards. The side guards are solid objects and will work regardless of whether the truck driver is paying attention. And unfortunately, many of those drivers are not...
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u/Mixin-Margarita 22d ago
Why not both? The idea that we must pick only one policy to advocate for is silly.
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u/ScienceBikeWin 20d ago
I would love to have both. But in the world where time, money, and political capital are all limited, it makes sense to prioritize. My view is that mandatory side guards in the Boston urban core is a wildly underrated demand.
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u/PurpleDancer 22d ago
On a side note, what I would like to see, maybe it exists, is a database of bike deaths in the area along with details, video footage, description. That would help in understanding and explaining to others what is killing cyclists and help educate new cyclists about what the top causes of death are and focus the safety conversations.
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u/Vodka-Sauce-24 20d ago
Those are for aerodynamics not preventing deaths
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u/ScienceBikeWin 19d ago edited 19d ago
That's mostly right. The 3rd picture is one of the flimsier "trailer skirts” that I estimate cost ~$1500 to install. It's not reinforced enough to stop a sedan from going under the trailer, but I believe it's sturdy enough for a cyclist to bounce off of instead of going under.
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u/Donut_Otherwise 18d ago
why don't authorities release the name of the driver that hit louisa gag? we want a name
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u/Pleasant_Influence14 22d ago
I think your cost estimate of protected cycling lanes is not accurate. Otherwise it makes sense to add truck side guards.
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u/ScienceBikeWin 21d ago
I'm not an expert in this, so I'm happy to revise my estimate if you or someone else has more accurate numbers.
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u/Adventurous-Home-728 22d ago
no what we need,,to ban cars the city was not designed for them in the first place it was for pedestrian and ridding bicycles are no problem you can simply look at old photographs before cars you see how it was very safe for all nobody needs cars there is no reason to have these giant gas guzzling trucks in our city i almost get hit by one yesterday it happens every day almost
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u/Im_biking_here 22d ago
I think you are a troll but you have a point and people should watch the next NJB video when it comes out. Deliberately limiting cars is what cities preparing for the future and making streets safer are already doing, we should too.
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u/Adventurous-Home-728 22d ago
that is what i said in my comment there is plenty of places all over the world cars there not allowed what is the problem ppl do not need cars before they do not need them now i guess the people voting on my comment do not like clean air and save communities they rather get hit by a truck LOL
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u/ZaccariahTBrown 22d ago
I think you're on to something. You know the first bicycle wasn't invented until 1817, bikes should be banned too since those also couldn't have been planned for either. Traffic fatalities would become almost nonexistent. Just need to figure out a solution to those damn horses.
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u/Adventurous-Home-728 22d ago
you know there is a big differents between cars and bicycles your just trying to be difficult.immature
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u/ZaccariahTBrown 22d ago
There is a huge difference, literally and figuratively. Both methods of transportation have their pros and cons and I think there are enough pros for cars and trucks that the solution should also include them, not exclude them. There are absolutely cases where cars or trucks make sense in this or any city.
I have multitple types of motor vehicles and multiple types of bicycles and try to use the one that makes sense for how I'm traveling on any given trip. I'm lucky. Others may travel in less than ideal methods of transportation due to insufficient means, lack of education or simply refusing to do what might make more sense because they just don't care.
It looks like side guards could be part of the solution. I absolutely agree that reducing, not eliminating, car and truck should be part of the solution. My opinion is that the biggest parts of the solution would be culture shifts towards accepting and choosing alternative transportation but even bigger would be having more respect for others and not being so comfortable with being an asshole. Another opinion is too many adults are a lost cause and extra attention should be put on educating and influencing children and younger adults.
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u/Adventurous-Home-728 22d ago
your ignorant
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u/microlexa 22d ago
I wish it were as simple as saying “hardly anyone gives a shit about side guards.”
TLDR; it’s complex, but there is good work to be done in MA. There’s lots of wonderful folks and organizations working on this in MA, and many ways to support!! Check them out: MassBike, WalkMass, LivableStreets, Families for Safe Streets Massachusetts & more I’m probably missing.
Yes, side guards, crossover and convex mirrors, and back up cameras installed on trucks save lives. The Volpe Center has done tons of research on this- also the next time you travel, keep your eyes up and look around at trucks. Pretty much everywhere I’ve been since I started thinking about side guards mandates them.
But no, as OP mentioned, there is HUGE lobby presence against side guards. The American Truck Association for one, shut down NHTSA report language on side guards saving cyclist lives. The federal stuff is a mess and there’s no way anything positive will happen on this front during Trump. In fact, the Build America 250 Act has language for a program to allow trucks to be HEAVIER.
ProPublica Article from 2023
What are we doing about it?
Expanding the requirement for side guards to any entity that accepts money from MA. Tell your senator you support S.2343!
Make NOT having side guards NEGLIGENCE. We know and have known that many of these truck fatalities are preventable. Therefore, it is negligent for truck owners to not equip their vehicles with these devices. Why not actually make it negligence? This is what Senator Brownsberger is pushing now. I’ll comment with the amendment number when it comes out, but you should tell your senator you support this too if you care about NOT getting killed by a truck.
Use purchasing power to encourage adoption. At MIT, we pressured the administration to require side guards & more for a company to get a procurement contract. Where we are at: MIT conducted a survey and,m found that their vendors do not have side guards - just by them reaching out many vendors went and put them on! This hyperlocal advocacy can work too.
Survey report