PHOENIX — The guardrail two Valley teens hit last week on I-17 has been controversial for years, and has had some calling for it to be removed from roads across the country.
Thousands of the same type of guardrail end terminal that the teens struck remain on Arizona’s roads.
16-year-old Jaxson Elliot and 17-year-old Jett Weinstein were on their way back home to the Valley after snowboarding in Flagstaff on Sunday, Feb. 4 when their car hit a guardrail South of Cordes Junction.
The guardrail speared into the car. Elliot died instantly and Weinstein had part of his leg amputated and suffered numerous broken bones.
VERSIÓN EN ESPAÑOL: Controversia alrededor de vallas de contención contra la que chocaron unos adolescentes en la I-17
12News has learned the guardrail the teens hit was an ET-Plus, manufactured by Trinity Industries. Arizona Department of Transportation confirmed with 12News through records the ET-Plus system was installed in 2004.
“I think if we are going to have guardrails on America’s roads they should actually do some guarding,” Steve Eimers, known as “The Guardrail Guy”, said.
Eimers became an advocate for guardrail safety after his 17-year-old daughter, Hannah, died when the guardrail she hit speared her car.
Now, Eimers tracks wrecks and guardrail safety around the country and says the guardrail the teens hit performed as he would have expected it to.
“It did it perform how I would expect it to which is not well,” Eimers said. “What I can say is that ultimately, we do not want to see guardrails entering the passenger compartment of the vehicle. And what we have is we have a guardrail system that's been implicated in dozens upon dozens of similar incidents.”
While ADOT records show that the ET-Plus system the teens hit alongside I-17 was inspected as recently as November 2023, in the nearly two decades since it was placed there ET-Plus guardrails have been the center of lawsuits in multiple states.
“We have evidence that this product has speared dozens and dozens of vehicles all across America,” Eimers said.
In a 2015 class action lawsuit out of Missouri that was just settled in 2022, attorneys claimed a design flaw in the ET-Plus.
“Instead of ribboning away from the vehicle, the guardrail spears or pierces the vehicle, or causes the vehicle to vault, rollover, or redirect in other unintended ways, thus resulting in serious injury or death to vehicle occupants and others,” the suit claims.
In 2014, the Federal Highway Administration began an investigation into the ET-Plus, ultimately finding it meets “applicable safety criteria.”
“Then we have a bigger problem, because if ‘as intended’ is to cut people in half and mutilate them, we have a big problem,” Eimers said.
During the investigation, ADOT announced that it had removed the ET-Plus from the agency’s approved products list. No additional ET-Plus end terminals have been installed on Arizona roads but 4,184 remain on Arizona’s roads currently, according to an ADOT spokesperson.
ET-Plus end terminals that are already installed on Arizona roads are replaced when damaged or through construction, according to the spokesperson.
“Guardrails and end sections cannot completely protect against every situation, but they are used because they work well under most conditions. According to the Federal Highway Administration, factors such as the size, speed, angle of impact and orientation of a vehicle can affect guardrail performance,” an ADOT spokesperson told 12News in part of an emailed statement in response to our questions and interview request.
In an interview last summer about guardrails on Arizona’s roads, Greg Byres, ADOT’s State Engineer Deputy Director echoed ADOT’s statement that safety is a top priority.
“The only reason that we have guardrails along the edges of our roadway is to keep a car contained if it for some reason goes out of control, it's there to assist that vehicle,” Byres said. “Because what's beyond that guardrail is much more damaging than the guardrail itself.”
Still, Eimers wants to see an overhaul of guardrails across the country.
“Ultimately, we're not talking about guardrail systems, we're talking about people's lives,” Eimers said.
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