Idaho, USA. After his daughter was killed when a car crashed into a guardrail in 2016, Steve Amers made it his mission to honor her memory by exploring guardrails across the United States. Under pressure from Ames, the Idaho Department of Transportation said it was checking thousands of guardrails in the state for safety.
On November 1, 2016, Aimers lost her 17-year-old daughter, Hannah Aimers, when her car hit the end of a guardrail in Tennessee. The guardrail impaled her car and impaled her.
Ames knew something was wrong, so he sued the manufacturer over the design. He said the case had come to a “satisfactory conclusion”. (Court records show there was no evidence that the fence that hit Hannah’s car was improperly installed.)
”I want to make sure no one is like who I wake up with every day because I’m the parent of a dead child crippled by a fence,” Ames said.
He spoke to politicians and transportation leaders in the US to draw attention to fenced terminals that may not be installed correctly. Some of them are called “Frankenstein fences” because they are fences built from a mixture of parts that Ames says creates monsters on our roadsides. He found other railings installed upside down, backwards, with missing or incorrect bolts.
The original purpose of barriers was to protect people from sliding off embankments, hitting trees or bridges, or driving into rivers.
According to the Federal Highway Administration, energy-absorbing barriers have a “shock head” that slides over the barrier when it hits a vehicle.
The car could hit the barrier head-on and the impact head flattened the barrier and redirected it away from the car until the car came to a halt. If the car hits the rails at an angle, the head also crushes the guardrail, slowing the car behind the rails.
If it didn’t, the guardrail could puncture the car – a red flag for Ames, as guardrail manufacturers warn against mixing parts to avoid serious injury or death, but that won’t happen.
Trinity Highway Products, now known as Valtir, said that failure to follow mixed parts warnings could result in “serious injury or death if the vehicle is involved in a collision with a system not approved by the Federal Highway Administration (FHA)”.
The Idaho Transportation Department’s (ITD) guardrail standards also require workers to install guardrails in accordance with the manufacturer’s instructions. These systems have been crash tested and approved by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA).
But after careful research, Ames said he found 28 “Frankenstein-style barriers” along Interstate 84 in Idaho alone. According to Ames, the fence near the Boise Outlet Mall was installed incorrectly. The guardrail at Caldwell, a few miles west of Interstate 84, is one of the worst guardrails Aimers has ever seen.
”The problem in Idaho is very serious and dangerous,” said Ames. “I started noticing samples of one manufacturer’s impact sockets installed with another manufacturer’s rails. I saw a lot of Trinity slotted ends where the second rail was installed upside down. When I started to see this and then saw it again and again, I realized that this is really serious.”
According to ITD records, four people in Idaho died between 2017 and 2021 when a car crashed into the barrier’s terminus, but ITD said there was no evidence of accidents or police reports that the barrier itself was the cause of their deaths.
“When someone makes so many mistakes, we have no inspection, no ITD oversight, no training for installers and contractors. It’s a very expensive mistake because we’re talking about expensive fencing systems,” Eimers said. “We have to make sure that this equipment, purchased with state taxes or federal aid, is properly installed. Otherwise, we’re embezzling tens of millions of dollars every year and causing accidents on the roads.”
So what did Ames do? He pressured the Idaho Department of Transportation to inspect all of the fencing terminals in the state. ITD indicated that it was listening.
ITD Communications Manager John Tomlinson said the department is currently conducting a statewide inventory of the entire fencing system.
”We want to make sure they’re installed correctly, that they’re safe,” Tomlinson said. “Whenever there’s damage at the ends of the guardrail, we check to make sure they’re installed correctly, and if there’s damage, we fix it right away. We want to fix it. We want to make sure they’re secured properly.”
In October, crews began digging deeper than 10,000 guardrail ends scattered across more than 900 miles of guardrails on state roads, he said.
Tomlinson added, “Then is to make sure our maintenance man has the proper channels of communication to get this across to the maintenance guys, contractors and everyone else because we just want it to be safe.”
Meridian’s RailCo LLC has contracted ITD to install and maintain railings in Idaho. RailCo owner Kevin Wade said parts on the Frankenstein rails could have been mixed up or installed incorrectly if ITD hadn’t checked their crew’s maintenance work.
Asked why they made a mistake when installing or repairing the fence, Tomlinson said it could be due to a supply backlog.
Investigating thousands of fences and being able to repair them takes time and money. ITD will not know the repair cost until the inventory is completed.
”We have to make sure we have enough money for this,” Tomlinson said. “But it’s important – if it kills or seriously injures people, we make all the necessary changes.”
Tomlinson added that they are aware of some “branch terminals” that they “want to modify” and will continue to inventory the state’s entire highway system in the coming months.
He again said that they did not know that these last treatments would not work properly during the crash.
KTVB contacted Idaho Gov. Brad Little about this. His press secretary, Madison Hardy, said Little is working with the Legislature to address security gaps with a transportation funding package.
”Promoting the safety and prosperity of Idahoans remains a top priority for Governor Little, and his legislative priorities for 2023 include more than $1 billion in new and ongoing transportation security investments,” Hardy wrote in an email.
Finally, Ames will continue to work with legislators and the Department of Transportation to honor his daughter, inspect the fences, and call anyone who can help.
Ames didn’t just want to solve the problem of dangerous barriers, he wanted to change the internal culture of the transportation department, making safety a priority. He is working to get clearer, unified guidance from state transportation departments, the FHA, and fencing manufacturers. He is also working to get manufacturers to add “this side up” or colored labels to their systems.
”Please don’t let families in Idaho be like me,” Ames said. “You shouldn’t let people die in Idaho.”
Post time: Jul-24-2023