Virginia To Remove Suspect Guardrails
Virginia plans to remove products from the guardrail maker Trinity Industries after the company failed to meet a deadline set by the state's Department of Transportation on plans for new crash testing.
The products, ET-Plus rail heads, are suspected of having a dangerous defect that could lead them to jam, causing guardrails to pierce vehicles in head-on collisions.
'We can't have an unapproved product on our roadways,' Marshall Herman, a spokeswoman for the agency, said on Monday. 'We're working as we speak on a plan for removal.'
Ms. Herman said the state's Transportation Department, working with the Virginia attorney general's office, would also seek reimbursement for the removal costs from Trinity.
Virginia officials had required Trinity to submit plans for new crash testing, along with additional documentation related to the ET-Plus, by Friday. The company requested an extension, but late Friday the agency sent Trinity a letter informing the company of its decision.
Ms. Herman said the state was encouraged that Trinity had agreed in principle to do new crash tests, as the Federal Highway Administration also subsequently demanded. She said Virginia would continue to coordinate with the federal agency, and Trinity, on its participation in new tests.
'If the crash test data comes back, and shows it's a safe product, we'll stop the removal,' she said. 'But we felt it was not prudent to wait any longer.'
Since the precise locations of all ET-Plus installations around the state are unknown, Virginia has begun taking an inventory of the products.
Thirteen states, including Virginia, have now banned installation of the ET-Plus guardrail head. The head - or end terminal - is the flat piece of steel at the front of the system that, on impact, is meant to glide along the rail and push the metal safely out of the way.
In 2005, without notifying the Federal Highway Administration, Trinity narrowed the channel behind the head to four inches from five, possibly causing the mechanism to malfunction, state officials have said.
Last week, a jury found that Trinity had defrauded the federal government when it for years kept the changes secret. The next day, the Federal Highway Administration demanded that the guardrail be retested, citing concerns that the new design had made it prone to malfunction.
The agency had previously defended the guardrail unit for more than two years, even after 2012, when it learned that Trinity had failed to report the design change.
The agency did not immediately comment. Trinity also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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