Side guards prevent cyclists and pedestrians from being trapped and crushed, e.g., when a truck makes a right turn into a person.
Boston requires them on city trucks. Can we push for these to be required on any truck coming through Cambridge? Ideally heavy truck through traffic should also be routed to non-heavily pedestrianized major roads. Trucks driving through cities should have side guards and cabs that are designed to increase visibility, e.g., cab-over trucks where the cabin is above the engine instead of behind the engine with the long "nose" sticking out. These features are absolutely possible and economic to transition to/install.
But the federal government still wants to let the industry it regulates regulate itself.
Researchers at the DOT’s Volpe Center in Cambridge, MA had their research in favor of side guards removed from the report.
"The Department of Transportation allowed trucking lobbyists to review an unpublished report recommending a safety device that could save lives by preventing pedestrians and cyclists from getting crushed under large trucks...Kwan told ProPublica and FRONTLINE that he’d never been asked to offer such deference to industry in his two decades of working for the department. 'Normally we don’t give ATA [American Trucking Associations] an opportunity to review and provide comments on any of our reports,” he said."
The review quashed the recommendation: https://www.propublica.org/article/dot-rejected-truck-side-guards-trucking-lobbyists-safety
The Volpe Center's webpage on side guards was taken down during the Trump administration but is back online: https://www.volpe.dot.gov/LPDs