There is a critical piece of safety equipment that can protect you from serious injury if it works and kill you if it fails. We are not talking about safety belts or airbags, but the guardrails that you see every day along the side of the highway, but probably don’t even notice. What most drivers do not know is that not all guard rails are created the same. Some guardrail terminals, instead of slowing down a vehicle that has crashed into it, pierce the vehicle and impale any occupants in its path.

How guardrails are supposed to work

This is a New York Times video of a crash test with a guardrail end terminal that functions as it should:

[Embed video link here: https://www.nytimes.com/video/business/100000003171283/a-guardrail-crash-test.html]

The highway department places those low, curved metal barriers to keep cars that slip off the pavement in an accident from going off an embankment, or whatever is on the other side of the barrier. The terminals (end caps) of the guardrails are designed to slow down a car colliding with them head-on.

Faulty guardrail crashes cause injury and death

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) reports that in 2014 there were 872 fatalities, 28,000 injuries and 76,000 property damage only collisions with guardrails, which account for 1.7% of the total number of crashes for that year. More vehicles crash into poles or run off the road into ditches than crash into guardrails, but when they do, the guardrail is designed to diminish the force of the impact and protect the occupants from more severe injuries. and with 872 fatalities out of 106,000 collisions with guardrails, they seem to be doing their job for the most part.

Fatal collision with a faulty guardrail

Hannah Eimers was killed when her vehicle crashed into the end terminal of a guardrail along a highway in eastern Tennessee in November 2016. A few months after her death, a letter arrived from the Tennessee Department of Transportation with a bill for nearly $3,000 to replace the guardrail end terminal that had been damaged in the crash that killed his daughter according to a story in the Washington Post. After recovering from the shock and anger that the bill incited in him, Hannah’s father, Mr. Eimers, who is an EMT could not get the circumstances of Hannah’s crash out of his head. He knew that in a crash with a guardrail, the terminal is supposed to crumple and dissipate some of the energy of the crash and making the collision more survivable. The passenger seat occupant emerged from the crash with a minor scratch.

Mr. Eimers started doing a little research and he discovered other crashes like Hannah’s and found that the guardrail system, the Lindsay X-Lite terminal was at fault. The Post story says that Eimers accused the Tennessee Department of Transportation of leaving those terminals in place despite its having been removed from the state’s list of qualified products in October, just days before Hannah’s death.

In December 2016, Tennessee started the process of removing the remaining 1,000 end terminals on roadways where the speed limit is higher than 45 mph.

A 2014 federal task force that studied, “Extruding W-Beam Guardrail Terminal Crashes,” examined collisions between vehicles and guardrail terminals and found performance limitations in real-world conditions for several guardrail terminal designs.

A story in the Knox News Sentinel reports that at least four people have died in Tennessee in collisions with guardrail end terminals that impaled the vehicle’s occupants instead of buckling to cushion the impact. The same company manufactured these terminals as the guardrail that caused Hannah’s death, the Lindsay X-Lite.

Were you or someone you care about injured in a car accident that was a result of someone else’s negligence? If so, you may be able to take legal action against the party responsible for your injuries. To learn more about the Knoxville car accident attorneys at Banks & Jones help our clients get the compensation they need to get their lives back on track after an injury, you are welcome to call us at 865-546-2141 or fill out our contact form. We serve clients in Knoxville and throughout Tennessee.