A rear-end collision between two cars at 40 mph is survivable by design. The bumpers meet, the crumple zones absorb energy, the airbags fire at roughly the right height, and the occupants have a realistic chance of walking away. Now add several feet of vertical mismatch. When a passenger car strikes the rear of a tractor-trailer, or when a large commercial truck rides over a smaller vehicle, none of those engineered protections engage in time. The car’s front end passes beneath the trailer floor and the passenger compartment takes the full force of the impact at roof level. That’s underride. When the truck’s massive front end rolls forward over a car it couldn’t stop for, that’s override. Both rank among the most lethal collision types on any road.
At Godosky & Gentile, we’ve spent decades litigating the most catastrophic personal injury cases in New York. Anthony Gentile’s $65 million medical malpractice verdict in Bronx County was the highest personal injury recovery of its time, earning a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. That level of preparation and relentlessness is what underride and override cases demand, because they’re rarely simple and the trucking industry has the resources to make them harder.
Why Underride & Override Crashes Kill When Other Collisions Don’t
The mechanism comes down to what engineers call a ground clearance mismatch. Passenger vehicles are built with safety systems calibrated to absorb energy at a specific height range. Tractor-trailer floors typically sit four or more feet off the ground. When those two heights meet in a collision, the car’s bumper, crumple zone, and airbag system all pass below the point of contact before any of them can do their job.
Underride occurs when a car’s roofline strikes and slides beneath a trailer, either at the rear or along the side. Override happens when the front of the truck rides up over a smaller vehicle, most often after a brake failure, following-distance violation, or intersection error. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) documents roughly 500 to 600 underride deaths per year in the United States from rear and side trailer impacts, and researchers believe the true number is higher because police crash reports don’t consistently record the mechanism that caused the fatality.
What Federal Underride Guard Rules Require and What They Miss
Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards FMVSS No. 223 and No. 224 require most new trailers and semitrailers with a gross vehicle weight rating of 10,000 pounds or more to carry a rear impact guard, a horizontal bar or panel attached across the back of the trailer with its bottom edge no more than 22 inches above the ground. In 2022, following a mandate written into the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, NHTSA upgraded those rear guard strength requirements so that guards must protect occupants in a 35 mph impact, replacing the prior 30 mph benchmark and bringing the U.S. standard in line with Canada’s. Even so, IIHS crash testing has shown that many guards meeting the old federal standard could still buckle or break off in ways that allow a car to underride.
What the federal rules don’t cover matters just as much. There’s currently no federal mandate requiring side underride guards on commercial trailers and no federal front override guard requirement. NHTSA is still studying both under a congressionally mandated advisory committee. For victims of crashes involving a truck turning across an intersection or a truck that overrode a car at a light, that regulatory gap is a direct factor in why the injury occurred.
New York’s Push for Side Underride Guards
New York City has moved ahead of the federal government on side guard requirements. NYC Local Law 108 of 2021 requires side guards on all city fleet vehicles and vehicles operated under city contracts with a gross vehicle weight rating over 10,000 pounds. Guards must have a maximum ground clearance of 13.8 inches and withstand a minimum 440-pound impact force, with compliance phased in through January 1, 2023. The law targets the turning and low-speed city driving scenarios where pedestrian and cyclist underride deaths are most concentrated.
State legislation would extend that protection further. Senate Bill S3391 would require side underride guards on privately owned trucks, tractors, and tractor-trailers of 26,000 pounds or more when operating in cities of one million or more people, meaning New York City streets. The bill hasn’t passed yet, so privately owned commercial trucks operating in the five boroughs aren’t currently required to carry side guards under state law.
That distinction carries real consequences in litigation. Whether a truck involved in a crash was subject to Local Law 108, whether it was a city contractor, and whether its side guard met the 13.8-inch clearance and 440-pound impact specs are questions that can determine liability before any other analysis begins.
Who Can Be Held Liable After an Underride or Override Crash
Investigating one of these crashes can reach well beyond the driver. Depending on what the physical evidence shows, liability can extend to the motor carrier for maintenance failures, the trailer manufacturer for a defective or inadequate rear impact guard, or a third-party maintenance contractor responsible for inspecting the guard before the trip. If the guard was required by FMVSS No. 223 or 224 and was missing, improperly installed, or structurally compromised at the time of the crash, that’s a separate theory of liability running parallel to the driver’s negligence.
Two recent changes to New York law affect how these cases are built and what victims can recover.
Elimination of the 90/180-Day Category
Effective May 26, 2026, New York eliminated the 90/180-day category from the serious injury threshold under Insurance Law Section 5102(d). That category had allowed victims with severe but temporary injuries to cross the threshold into pain and suffering damages by showing they were incapacitated for 90 of the 180 days following the accident. Its removal means that pathway is no longer available, and injury documentation has to meet a different standard from the start.
Modified Comparative Fault for Motor Vehicle Claims
The same 2026 reform introduced a modified comparative fault rule for motor vehicle claims under Insurance Law Article 51. Under that rule, a claimant whose share of fault exceeds the combined fault of all defendants is now barred from recovery entirely. This is a departure from New York’s traditional pure comparative negligence framework, under which a plaintiff could recover even if they were 99% at fault. In truck crash litigation, where trucking company defense teams routinely try to attribute driver error to the injured person, this change raises the stakes of how fault is allocated at every stage of the case.
Why the First Days After the Crash Shape the Entire Case
The physical evidence in an underride or override crash starts disappearing fast. A tractor-trailer’s event data recorder may record only a short window of pre-crash data before being overwritten. The guard itself, whether damaged or intact, needs to be preserved and inspected before the truck returns to service. Photographs of the guard condition, installation hardware, and ground clearance measurements taken at the scene can determine whether the equipment was compliant at the time of impact or whether it failed the standard it was supposed to meet. Under New York’s tightened injury thresholds, how quickly and thoroughly that evidence is gathered shapes what a case looks like when it reaches a jury or a negotiating table.
We prepare every truck crash case as if it will go to trial, because that readiness is what produces leverage at every stage. If you or someone you love was injured in an underride or override truck crash in New York, reach us at (212) 742-9706.