In the latest in a string of lawsuits against Trinity Highway Products regarding the company’s guardrail construction, a young man from Massachusetts claims that his leg was severed during a collision.

According to local news source, the Union Leader, Jorge R. of Massachusetts was riding in the passenger seat of a Nissan Sentra on Interstate 93 in New Hampshire on April 25, 2019, when the car collided with a guardrail. While the driver of the vehicle suffered only minor injuries, Jorge’s leg was severed. According to first responders, the guardrail pierced through the front of the vehicle and into the passenger compartment, where it sliced off Jorge’s leg at the knee.

Trinity guardrails are supposed to compress and flatten out during collisions with vehicles, slowing the vehicle down. However, multiple lawsuits against the company claim that these guardrails are faulty, defective, and may cause dangerous injuries. These lawsuits claim that during collisions, the impact plate of the guardrail may jam, causing the strip of metal to act like a spear. This design flaw is allegedly due to changes that Trinity made to the guardrails in the early 2000s in an effort to reduce the costs of materials. According to multiple lawsuits regarding Trinity guardrail injuries, these changes were not disclosed and were made at a time when the company did not have any engineers employed.

Although New Hampshire has banned new Trinity guardrails from being installed in the state, there are approximately 3,000 of the guardrails still in place on roads and highways across the state. These guardrails make up approximately 11 percent of New Hampshire’s roadway rails.

Thousands of people are involved in auto accidents each year in the United States. Those collisions occurring on highways can be especially devastating and deadly.

Highway guardrails are designed to keep automobiles safer in the case of an accident on a highway. A guardrail’s “rail head” or “end terminal” is designed to peel away from the vehicle if the vehicle strikes the guardrail end-on.

However, a popular manufacturer of guardrails has allegedly changed its guardrail construction without telling the Federal Highway Administration. Many motorists and families of those who have been in accidents allege that this change in guardrail construction has put many in harm’s way.

Daughter’s Death Blamed on Guardrail Construction

According to Fox 4 Kansas City, a Missouri man blames faulty guardrail construction by Trinity Guardrails for the death of his daughter.

He claims that on Dec. 13, 2018, three of his daughters were driving on icy roads to visit their brother’s house. This car accident was allegedly one of 13 that happened that day in southeast Missouri.

The man’s daughters’ car allegedly slid when it hit ice and fishtailed before it went off the road. As it did this, it hit the guardrail, Fox 4 Kansas City reports.

One of the teenage girls, aged 16, was sitting in the back seat strapped into her seatbelt. By the time the father got to the scene, his daughter in the back seat was already pronounced dead.

The attorney for the man told the news outlet, “[The guardrail] speared, intruded, penetrated, whatever term you would like to use, but yes, this huge W beam went into the space where [the girl] was seated.”

The father blames the death of his daughter on cheap and faulty guardrail construction. This isn’t the first time that the safety guardrail construction has been questioned. Many believe that this particular guardrail, called the ET Plus and manufactured by Trinity Guardrails, is very dangerous and should not be on the road.

Allegedly, the company redesigned its guardrail construction in 2005, affecting thousands of American guardrails, but without notifying anyone of the redesign. Fox 4 reports, “Guardrails are supposed to slow cars down when they go off the road. Multiple lawsuits alleged that the ET Plus is so poorly designed that on impact, it can lock up and bend, creating a lethal spear that can penetrate a car.”

The attorney for the family told Fox 4 that in an accident like these, “[t]hese guardrails will cut up a car like it’s butter in a fraction of a second.”

A spokesperson for the guardrail company said of the guardrail construction, “The ET Plus has never been found defective in any court of law. It meets all standards set forth by the Federal Highway Administration.”

The father of the girl who died claims that Trinity did not disclose the change in their guardrail construction to buyers and that they changed their guardrail construction in order to increase their profits.

Allegedly, the unsafe end treatment of the guardrails in question was reduced from a five-inch beam to a four-inch beam. That is a change of 20 percent and a reduction in weight by 100 pounds.

This change in guardrail construction has been so significant that the state of Virginia reportedly ran its own tests and then eventually banned the new guardrails. After this, another 25 states have done the same, including Missouri and Kansas.