OTTAWA -- If Canada had tougher safety standards for rear guards on transport trucks, a 24-year-old Ottawa man could still be alive today.

At least that's what Byron Bloch says, a Maryland-based automotive safety consultant who made the comments to The Ottawa Citizen after a horrific accident involving a rear-end, car-truck collision.

Liam Closs Mannion died last weekend when he drove his Volkswagen Jetta into the back of a tractor-trailer on Highway 417.

According to police, Mannion failed to brake in time when traffic slowed immediately in front of him. His car plowed through the truck's underride guard and slid completely under the trailer, sheering off the roof and front windshield.

Mannion died at the scene.

(Additional reports suggest Mannion was speeding). 

Some trailers on the highways don't
have strong enough underride
guards a crash expert says

Although rear impact guards have improved since the "junk from the 1953 regulations," Bloch told the newspaper that they still need to be improved.

"The guards are basically only about half the strength they need to be," said Bloch, who gives expert testimony in auto accident cases.

Laws in Canada requiring trailers to have rear impact guards came into effect in 2004. Newer trailers are able to withstand more impact force than older ones, says Bloch. 

A spokesman for Wilson Specialized Motor Express, the trucking company that owns the trailer involved in accident, told the Citizen the truck-trailer unit was "fairly new" and met all safety standards.

Last year, former Federal Transportation Minister Lawrence Cannon said Ottawa was in the process of studying the possibility of mandatory sideguards on all Canadian trucks.

But he did add there is little evidence to suggest that sideguards would be effective if introduced as a mandatory standard on new Canadian commercial vehicles.