Indiana Reviews Guardrails in Use Around State

The Indiana highway agency is reviewing its guardrails around the state as one supplier faces criticism over the safety of a design change.

Department of Transportation spokesman Will Wingfield says the agency estimates about 4,000 of the ET-Plus guardrails built by Trinity Industries are in use along Indiana highways.

Wingfield tells The Herald-Times that a review of hundreds of crash records hasn’t yet turned up evidence of the guardrails failing in Indiana.

Critics say Trinity’s 2005 design change made it more likely that cars would be impaled if they hit either end of a guardrail head-on. Trinity stopped selling the ET-Plus guardrails last month after a Texas jury ruled that the company should pay at least $175 million for failing to tell regulators about the change.