{"id":6807,"date":"2014-10-27T10:58:49","date_gmt":"2014-10-27T14:58:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.myparkingsignblog.com\/blog\/?p=6807"},"modified":"2017-03-27T07:21:40","modified_gmt":"2017-03-27T11:21:40","slug":"guardrails-market-due-safety-fraud-concerns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myparkingsign.com/blog\/guardrails-market-due-safety-fraud-concerns\/","title":{"rendered":"Guardrails off the market due to safety & fraud concerns"},"content":{"rendered":"

A guardrail company will, for the time being, stop selling a product that has been found to impale auto occupants in crashes. Trinity Industries’ guardrails, which had already been banned in 13 states and counting as of last week, will be off the market until “further testing” can be done, reports<\/a> the New York Times.<\/p>\n

Despite significant safety concerns which led several states to ban the guardrail last week, Trinity Industries had continued to sell the product\u2026 until, last week a jury found that the company had defrauded the federal government by not informing the Federal Highway Administration of changes it had made to the product nine years ago.<\/p>\n

\"guardrail<\/a>

Trinity Industries’ guardrails have been implicated in\u00a0at least five deaths plus assorted injuries. The guardrails have already been installed in nearly every state. From thisisbossi<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

What’s the problem with the guardrails? The design of the rail’s end terminal — “a flat piece of steel at the front that, on impact, is meant to glide along the rail and push the metal safely out of the way” — was changed in 2005, but Trinity did not inform the government, which it is required to do. (Trinity had reduced the channel behind the head from five inches to four inches. This might have resulted in the mechanism jamming, according to state officials. “When that happens, the rail may spear the vehicle itself, potentially injuring occupants,” explains the Times.)<\/p>\n

Fourteen or more lawsuits attribute five deaths — plus injuries — to the faulty guardrails. \u201cThe right thing to do is to stop shipping the product until the additional testing has been completed,\u201d Gregg Mitchell, the president of Trinity\u2019s highway products department, told the Times. The company also agreed that it would not ship out any pending orders of the guardrails, known as the ET-Plus.<\/p>\n

The guardrails are used along roadways in almost every state. States that banned the guardrail prior to the company\u2019s agreement to cease selling it included Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, Hawaii, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. Connecticut is home to about 200 Trinity rail heads, while Arizona has more than 3,500 of Trinity\u2019s guardrail systems. Individual states hold responsibility for the safety equipment used on their highways, but the Federal Highway Administration is a \u201cclearinghouse for safety data and approving products for federal reimbursement.\u201d<\/p>\n

The government had continually defended the rails, despite learning over two years ago that Trinity Industries had not reported the 2005 changes to the product. \u201cWe will not waver on safety,\u201d Neil Gaffney, an agency spokesman, told the Times. \u201cTrinity is required to retest the ET-Plus guardrail end terminal to ensure it meets both the safety criteria set by the states and, most importantly, the safety expectations of motorists on our highways.\u201d<\/p>\n

The government agency had first heard of the change in design back in 2012, via a Trinity competitor named Joshua Harman. Harman noted the design change in 2011 in litigation, and later filed a lawsuit against Trinity on behalf of the Federal Highway Administration. Last week, a jury in Texas found that Trinity had \u201cdefrauded the federal agency by keeping those changes secret for seven years,\u201d reports the Times.<\/p>\n

The verdict? $175 million. Yet the company\u2019s costs may rise to $1 billion, as the initial amount must be tripled — according to federal law — and the company may also have to fork over lawyers’ fees and statutory fines.<\/p>\n

Trinity Industries is expected to turn in a plan for testing the product by later this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A guardrail company will, for the time being, stop selling a product that has been found to impale auto occupants in crashes. Trinity Industries’ guardrails, which had already been banned in 13 states and counting as of last week, will be off the market until “further testing” can be done, reports the New York Times. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[637,577],"tags":[652,651,494,366,445,649,648,650],"class_list":["post-6807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-infrastructure","category-transportation-2","tag-arizona","tag-connecticut","tag-federal-highway-administration","tag-massachusetts","tag-new-hampshire","tag-trinity","tag-trinity-industries","tag-vermont"],"yoast_head":"\nGuardrails off the market due to safety & fraud concerns - MyParkingSign Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A change in guardrail design that the manufacturer didn't report to buyers in government may have led to traffic fatalities.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.myparkingsign.com/blog\/guardrails-market-due-safety-fraud-concerns\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Guardrails off the market due to safety & fraud concerns - MyParkingSign Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A change in guardrail design that the manufacturer didn't report to buyers in government may have led to traffic fatalities.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.myparkingsign.com/blog\/guardrails-market-due-safety-fraud-concerns\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"MyParkingSign Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parkingsigns\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-10-27T14:58:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2017-03-27T11:21:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.myparkingsign.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/guardrail.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Katy B. 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