Letter to Greg Nadeau, Acting Administrator of the Federal Highway Administration - Testing Guardrails Using New, More Stringent Method
Letter
Dear Acting Administrator Nadeau:
I write today to reiterate my continued concerns with the safety of the ET-Plus guardrail end terminal. As you are well aware, it is critical that FHWA determine if the design changes made in 2005 to the end terminal are truly safe, as the company claims, or if in fact there are significant safety issues with the guardrail. I applaud you for compelling Trinity to conduct additional crash testing on the end terminal, however I am concerned that the testing plan laid out by Trinity and approved by FHWA leaves significant gaps in oversight and as a result will continue to leave unanswered questions about the safety of the guardrail end terminal.
Specifically, the testing model put forward proposes to test the guardrails using the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 350 testing standards rather than the AASHTO Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware (MASH) adopted in 2011. In order to ensure the safety of the traveling public FHWA must require Trinity to test the guardrails using the toughest and most up to date possible standard, in this situation that is MASH. Grandfathering Trinity into the older NCHRP standard, which was replaced in 2011 by MASH leaves significant gaps and concerns with the safety of the Trinity ET-Plus end terminal. While I understand that the ET-Plus end terminal was developed prior to the 2011 standard, given Trinity's track record and the significant and documented concerns with the ET-Plus end terminal, FHWA should be exhaustive in efforts to determine the performance of the ET-Plus.
In addition, I want to reiterate my request for further information about the number of these guardrail end terminals installed on roadways across the country. I appreciate the complexity involved with gathering that amount of data from across the country and the challenge of working with a wide array of state and local governments, however it is critical that the size and scope of this potential issue is determined as soon as possible. I appreciate your continued efforts to provide additional information on this issue.
Sincerely,
Charles E. Schumer
United States Senator
Source