‘Dangerous Trucks’ on America’s Roads

The FRONTLINE Dispatch

GBH

News

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 7 July 2023

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Correspondent A.C. Thompson joins the FRONTLINE Dispatch to discuss America’s Dangerous Trucks, an investigation in partnership with ProPublica.

The film examines a particularly devastating type of traffic accident involving trucks – underride crashes — and how for decades, federal regulators inside the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) failed to enact new safety measures to prevent them.

“In the 1960s, the federal safety regulators, they start looking at this issue and they're saying, this is a problem,” Thompson recounts. “They do studies, and it then takes them more than 30 years to do anything. And that was shocking to me.”

You can watch America’s Dangerous Trucks on FRONTLINE’s website, FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel, and the PBS App.

Want to be notified every time a new podcast episode drops? Sign up for The FRONTLINE Dispatch newsletter.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Over the past decade, deadly traffic accidents involving trucks have increased on America's roads.
0:09.0	This is just really devastating.
0:13.0	16-year-old kid in it, it's, you know, none of it was his fault.
0:17.0	America's dangerous trucks is a new documentary from Frontline and ProPublica.
0:22.0	The film reveals how, for decades, regulators fail to enact safety measures,
0:27.0	designed to prevent one particularly devastating type of accident, underride crashes.
0:33.0	Underride rear, front override, underride side, underrides side.
0:37.0	There is a severe undercounting of the number of underride crashes in this country.
0:43.0	All regulations stopped.
0:45.0	Did people die unnecessarily?
0:47.0	Oh, heck yes.
0:48.0	Correspondent AC Thompson joins me to talk about the investigation.
0:52.0	I'm Rainier and St. Roth, editor-in-chief and executive producer of Frontline.
0:57.0	And this is the Frontline Dispatch.
1:04.0	The Frontline Dispatch is made possible by the Abrams Foundation, committed to excellence in journalism
1:10.0	and by the Frontline Journalism Fund, with major support from John and Joanne Hagler.
1:15.0	Support for Frontline Dispatch comes from the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center,
1:19.0	dedicated to providing compassionate care and cancer specialists who are experienced in the cancer you have.
1:24.0	When you hear the word cancer, their team is ready.
1:27.0	Learn more at massgeneral.org slash cancer.
1:30.0	AC, thanks for joining me on the Dispatch.
1:32.0	Hey, thanks for having me on.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from GBH, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of GBH and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.