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ADOT Inspects Potentially Dangerous Highway Guardrails

A Texas company that manufactured more than 3,500 road and highway guardrails used in Arizona is facing a series of personal injury lawsuits. The firm is being sued by 14 people who claim they were injured after the guardrails allegedly malfunctioned or pierced the body of their vehicles during a crash.

The Arizona Department of Transportation said it has removed the ET-Plus guardrail “end terminals” from its list of approved products. 

The agency said it’s also working with the Federal Highway Administration to monitor the situation. But Arizona Public Interest Research Group spokeswoman Diane Brown said ADOT needs to do more.

“We would encourage ADOT to provide as much information as possible to the public to help alleviate concerns and to help demonstrate how quickly they are responding to this problem,” Brown said.

The guardrail caps manufactured by the Trinity Company were approved by federal safety inspectors in the year 2000...but Trinity did not notify federal officials when it changed the design in 2005.  Bloomberg News Service reports as many as 20 people may have been killed by the guardrails.  Nevada’s Department of Transportation has also stopped using the Trinity equipment. 

Steve Shadley was a reporter at KJZZ from 1990 to 1996 and from 2012 to 2015.