The attorneys at Kuhlman & Lucas plan to assert that Lindsay was strictly liable for. The decedent’s truck traveled 175 feet along the guardrail before coming to a stop. Stancil is a breaking news reporter for TCPalm. The guardrail end terminal, manufactured by Lindsay and called the X-Lite, speared the front of the decedent’s truck and ejected him from the back end of the truck. The Knoxville News Sentinel contributed to this report. The guardrail end impaled the vehicle and killed her instantly, her family said in a lawsuit.Īfter three more Tennesseans died in two crashes in which the guardrails speared their vehicles, the Tennessee Department of Transportation said it would take the unprecedented step of spending millions to remove all X-LITEs from state roads.įamilies of victims In Tennessee and South Carolina have filed lawsuits against Lindsay.įlorida and other states stopped using the guardrails or removed them from roads altogether. The X-LITE came under public scrutiny in 2017 after 17-year-old Hannah Eimers, of Lenoir City, Tennessee, crashed her father's car into one of the guardrails along Interstate 75 in McMinn County. Lindsay has maintained its product is not defective and said it received approval from the Federal Highway Administration. Wrongful death lawsuits filed by families of crash victims assign the deaths to the X-Lite devices. In some crashes, the guardrail ends have become separated and skewered vehicles. The X-LITE, like most guardrails, is constructed of multiple pieces designed to collapse into each other when struck to absorb some of the impact of a crash.īut officials have found the X-LITE doesn't always work as intended. ![]() More: Over 100 Brevard school buses affected by nationwide recall over unsafe seats 710, a few miles south of County Road 714, also known as Martin Grade Scenic Highway the other set was 3.6 miles south of the C.R.714 intersection. In Martin County, four were replaced in October on S.R. More: I survived the Crosstown-Floresta intersection - and you can too | Opinion Two were replaced in Brevard earlier this year on State Road 46, near the intersection of Palm Avenue in Mims. Martin, Brevard and several other counties in Florida have X-LITE guardrail ends in place, state transportation officials said. "This occurred after the Lindsay Corporation failed to adequately address concerns regarding the performance of the product." "FDOT removed the X-LITE (guardrail end terminals) from its approved product list in February 2018," FDOT spokesman Steve Olson said. In recent years, there have been mounting concern about the performance of some guardrails.A model of guardrail ends tied to death investigations in several states are being removed from Florida roadways, Florida Department of Transportation officials said. "The department really apologizes for that," Degges said. "We have seen some crashes at the state highway and how some of these products are reacting to some of these particularly high-speed type crashes," Paul Degges of the Tennessee Department of Transportation said.ĭegges admits sending a bill to the Eimers was a horrible mistake. ![]() They are now replacing them on roads with speed limits over 45 mph. Just days before Hannah's crash, the Tennessee Department of Transportation stopped installing that type of guardrail stopper, citing safety and performance concerns. ![]() Guardrails are designed to absorb the impact of a crash, and the metal stoppers on the end are supposed to help bend back the metal in some instances and slow the car down. The state of Tennessee chose to play Russian roulette with people's lives and my daughter is dead."Įimers is calling on the state to remove all X-Lite guardrail end pieces - about 1,000 in Tennessee. "I don't understand how you can leave a dangerous product on the road after you've already acknowledged it," Eimers said. She was killed instantly when it "intruded" into her Volvo sedan's driver's door, "striking her in the chest and head." Hannah Eimers Along I-75, The Reveal found at least four in Henry County and at least two in Gordon. Last November, Hannah's car left the road, and as she corrected, she collided with the end of a X-Lite guardrail stopper. Our investigation found multiple X-Lite guardrails on busy Georgia highways where the speed limit is 65. "It is one of the emotionally most tone-deaf acts that I think I have ever witnessed," Eimers said. Nearly four months after Eimers' 17-year-old daughter, Hannah, died in a car crash in November, Tennessee sent a nearly $3,000 bill for repairs to the X-Lite guardrail stopper Hannah collided with. "They killed her, then they billed her," Stephen Eimers said. A father is outraged after his daughter was billed for a guardrail involved in her fatal car crash.
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