Iowa sticking with guardrail end cap ‘crash cushion’

Iowa officials are satisfied with a federal review clearing a 'crash cushion” blamed for deadly crashes and will continue to allow its use in the state.

The Federal Highway Administration and American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials conducted a joint review of Trinity Industry Inc.'s ET Plus guardrail end cap from late last fall through this spring.

'From the federal perspective, it's good to go,” said Steve Gent, Iowa Department of Transportation director of traffic and safety. 'We see it as a done issue since the ruling came out.”

The ET Plus is one of several guardrail end treatment products used in Iowa. It's a steel plate that slides on to the end of a guardrail, often found near a bridge approach, including along interstates 380 in Cedar Rapids and Interstate 80 in Iowa City.

A federal whistleblower lawsuit filed in Texas claimed the ET Plus design was secretly altered, causing a defect where guardrails speared vehicles rather than working as intended to shove them away in the event of a head-on crash.

The federal results released last month showed the product passed a battery of tests conducted in two rounds earlier this year. In total, Eight The tests measured a variety of criteria, such as occupancy risk, structural adequacy and vehicle trajectory.

The review means the ET Plus remains eligible for federal reimbursement, Gent said. Most states had banned, suspended or removed the product, but Iowa had not.

Last fall, Gent said Iowa was monitoring the situation until federal testing was complete. He acknowledged the federal review could force the removal and replacement of about 1,200 ET Plus products statewide, which could have cost $2.4 million to replace.

'If something was substandard we'd have to get out there and get it fixed,” Gent said Thursday. 'That's not good to for us. It's not good for taxpayers. It's not good for anyone.”

Gent said the product remains eligible for use by contractors in Iowa. Jeff Eller, a spokesman for Dallas-based Trinity, said the company discontinued shipping ET Plus in October but will make a decision soon whether to resume.

Despite the federal review, ET Plus continues to face new lawsuits. An Arizona family Thursday sued Trinity, claiming the product is to blame in a man's death last year, according to ABC15 in Arizona. The Chicago Tribune reports eight deaths have been tied to ET Plus through lawsuits.

The Texas A&M Transportation Institute invented the product in 2000 and licensed it through Trinity, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

'We're pleased - and not at all surprised - that the ET Plus performed so well in these tests,” Dean Alberson, the institute's assistant agency director and a research engineer, said in a news release. 'This independent testing - the most rigorous ever applied to any guardrail end-terminal system -... plus 15 years of roadside experience vindicate our confidence in the ET Plus.”