PLANT CITY, Fla. — In surveillance video taken from a business across the street, you can see driver Jose Sanchez Sanchez hit a guardrail.

According to a Plant City police report, the truck was only traveling at around 45 mph when Sanchez Sanchez hit the guardrail. It impaled his truck and killed him.

“It was astonishing,” said Steve Eimers, a safety advocate who lost his daughter after her car crashed into a guardrail.

“A catastrophic spearing with these outcomes at 45 mph. It's shocking, absolutely shocking.” Eimers watched the surveillance video with 10 Investigates.

“It's very difficult to you know, we have a lot of people that we like to meet about safety. We like to talk about safety. We like to study safety. We have not gotten very good at practicing safety,” Eimers said.

Working to learn more about the guardrail that was hit, we reached out to the Florida Department of Transportation. They told us, “that in August of 2022, the guardrail that was there at the time had been replaced.”

Sanchez Sanchez crashed into a trailing end terminal. According to engineers at Ingal Civil Products, Trailing Terminals are intended to provide anchorage for the barrier: "They are not crashworthy terminals when struck head-on since they are not designed to break away."

The Florida Department of Transportation also told us this in their email, "In 2016, the Department moved to upgrade to NCHRP 350 compliant guardrails and end treatments during all roadway rehabilitation and improvement projects."  

Eimers says that what stuck out to him about the response was there are newer standards out there to use when installing new roadside systems.

“We have to implement, fully implement the MASH testing standards. We cannot be having Florida DOT, and they're not the only ones doing this. I'm not picking on them, but going out and installing MELTs or SRT, 350s, or other 350 devices, when we have terminal safety devices, which we know, are crashworthy at a higher level,” Eimers said.

Working with Eimers, we went through data from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration from 2016-2020, documenting more than 440 deaths connected to accidents involving NCHRP350 Compliant guardrails nationwide. 

In comparison, there were a few under the latest standards called "Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware" or MASH.

10 Investigates uncovered this Government Accountability Report from 2016. It mentions the Federal Highway Administration encouraging states to transition to installing only MASH standard tested roadside safety hardware by 2019 but notes concerns with how the agency would track the states' progress. 

“It’s just appalling,” Eimers said.

Weeks after Sanchez Sanchez's death, a new guardrail has been installed. It is a MASH-tested guardrail and end treatment.

When we asked FDOT about the MASH testing standards, they provided the following statement:

“As you know, safety remains the top priority of the Department and, as mentioned previously, our agency is constantly evolving to meet the latest safety procedures and be up to speed with the most recent technological innovations available.

In 2017, FDOT issued a revision to its Design Standards which incorporated MASH-16 criteria into its standards for new guardrail installations. As part of this revision, the MELT end treatment was removed from FDOT standards for new guardrail installations and repair, making this type of guardrail similar to types of guardrails we’ve previously discussed. Whenever guardrail technologies and safety procedures are updated our standards and procedures are updated as well. So, while MELT terminals are in place on Florida roadways, they are being replaced with MASH-16 compliant terminals as they become damaged or when new projects take place.

As with any crash, the Department will conduct a full review of the crash to evaluate all contributing factors. While guardrails are designed to consider as many impact scenarios as possible, guardrails are designed to reduce the danger of a driver departing the roadway in the direction that they are traveling.

To that end, updates, innovations, and improved technologies with equipment like guardrail and end treatments are constantly evolving and our training evolves as well. The Department consistently reviews our Approved Product List (APL) to help ensure only products up to the latest safety standards are installed on our roadways.

As an update on the ongoing statewide assessment of all guardrail end terminals, the Department has begun a statewide evaluation and anticipates completing the review in the next two months. We are grateful for the feedback provided by your team.

Please let us know if have any further questions. FDOT reminds all drivers to always be alert, buckle up, and avoid distractions while driving.”

Michael Williams
Florida Department of Transportation
Deputy Communications Director

10 Investigates has spotted NCHRP 350 guardrails at sites where guardrails have been replaced or repaired, including the site where Hunter Burns lost his life after crashing into a guardrail.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — “It's erratic driving, changing lanes very quickly,” Donald Schnell said.

He was on his way home from work in Pinellas County when he says his dash cam captured the moments leading up to a crash on the Howard Frankland Bridge back in June.

Florida Highway Patrol troopers say a 19-year-old Spring Hill man, Rolando Garza, was headed eastbound into Tampa in a Ford Focus when he slammed into a 74-year-old Sarasota woman in a Lexus RX350, sending both cars off the bridge. 

While crashes on the Howard Frankland might seem pretty typical, this one had Schnell wondering if the drivers went into the waters below.

“There's so many places on that bridge, you know that this could have happened, they would have been in the water,” Schnell said.

RELATED: VIDEO: Spring Hill man causes rollover crash on Howard Frankland Bridge

In the dash cam video, you can see Garza speeding, crashing, then pushing the RX350 into the guardrail. The cars ended up off the roadway where some cars were parked in a construction zone. Garza was later charged with reckless driving. Schnell says after the crash, he pulled over on the side of the road to help everyone.

“It's the first time I had a real chance to use the dash cam for any good I mean, I've seen a lot of bad drivers, but this is the first action I caught on camera,” Schnell said.

He says he didn’t realize there was even a guardrail along the roadway. He says it was just obliterated.

“It opened up so wide, I didn't know there's a guardrail there," Schnell said. "And so I walked down, and I see the big chunk of it hanging off to the right. That was all concrete barriers until I walked in there and saw what was going on."

“I didn't realize there's a small section of the metal barrier there," he continued. "Certainly didn't do his job on that day. Looked like it was, there's only a couple supports holding it."

The Sarasota driver was seriously injured in the crash. Her SUV was pushed into a guardrail that did nothing to absorb the energy of the crash. That’s because as 10 Investigates has learned, the guardrail was improperly installed. 

Immediately after the crash, The Guardrail Guy and safety advocate Steve Eimers called 10 Investigates to explain why he believed the rail ruptured, showing us Google Street View images of problems with the guardrail. We sent the same information to University of Alabama Birmingham Engineering Professor Kevin Schrum who agreed.

“Essentially, you see a bunch of extra holes right at that location,” Schrum said.

Schrum says if a guardrail is designed correctly, it will work as a guard and redirect the car upon impact.

“So that's a very critical feature of guardrail design,” Schrum said. “But ultimately, by putting holes in the system, you do a couple of different things to weaken the integrity of the rail. You add an extra set of stress concentrations."

"So you're removing cross-sectional area from the steel, which makes it obviously very weak, weaker than it already is," he continued. "Then by putting that hole in one of the rails for the post bolt, the only way it can separate is through a very torturous event.”

RELATED: FDOT said guardrails would be fixed by year's end, but 10 Investigates found one improperly installed

Last year, after 10 investigates spent months looking into improperly installed guardrails across the state as part of our series Unguarded. The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) did a full review of thousands of miles of guardrail and repaired or replaced nearly one-third of guardrail end treatments. FDOT secretary Jared Perdue even commented on our findings last month:

“We have been very proactive as soon as we heard that," he said. "We sent teams out all across the state to inspect guardrails to make sure they're installed properly. We identified those we quickly moved to make sure those were installed the right way and we've put a lot of programs in place to ensure that those contractors and vendors installing the guardrail and doing it properly in the future, so that is not an issue here in Florida. We spare no expense when it comes to the maintenance and preservation of our assets.”

But then, there is a crash like this and a guardrail is exposed.

“In their defense, this is something that's kind of in the middle of the rail," Schrum said. "It really doesn't stand out. But this kind of illustrates some of the other problems that we face. It's in these, these minutia, like the details themselves don't always seem to be all that important. Otherwise, you know, if you knew the guardrail was going to rupture and kill or hurt somebody, you wouldn't compromise it."

"I wouldn't think that you would do that," he continued. "So I think it comes down to lack of understanding or training or knowledge. On a deeper level, it's not just about knowing how to pound the post and tighten the nuts down and line everything up. It's knowing why that slot is three and a half inches long and why it's important. And I think that kind of gets missed a little bit sometimes in our in our training programs and in our evaluation criteria for those crews that are installing them."

We did reach out to FDOT about the guardrail installation at the crash site but have yet to hear back.

Some advocates say the state would benefit from a guardrail garden which is a training facility where you have an example of all types of guardrail installs. It allows people to train in a controlled environment. 10 Investigates has heard from sources that it’s something Florida has talked about, and we are waiting to hear back from the state on any confirmation.

If you see a guardrail that doesn't look right, you can send it to 10 Investigates to check out. You can also watch the special Unguarded on YouTube.

LINCOLN, Neb. — The chair of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is commenting for the first time about electric vehicles and guardrails. 

Jennifer Homendy, the NTSB chair, went to Nebraska where she participated in a roundtable discussion with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, about potential solutions when it comes to electric vehicles, their safety risks, and their impact on infrastructure.

On X, United States Senator Deb Fischer thanked Homendy for accepting her invitation to take part in the discussion.

Homendy then replied, “as the country moves forward toward EV adoption, NTSB's mission is to ensure safety isn’t left behind.”

That was followed up with video of a crash test involving a Rivian and a concrete barrier which had a much different result than the crash test from a few months back involving a Rivian and a guardrail. The Rivian completely took out the guardrail. 

We’ve learned that electric vehicles are much heavier than gas-powered ones, and that’s why we are seeing crash tests taking place across the country as more electric vehicles are out on our roads.

In late June, 10 Investigates spoke with James Kovar, an assistant research scientist at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute. They too, released video of a crash test involving a Tesla and a guardrail. He says these tests are step one to improving infrastructure on our roadways. He says step two is mitigating any concern.

“This is not a cause for panic. The vehicle fleet changes over time, and so does our roadside safety hardware,” Kovar said.

On X, the NTSB chair went on to say that "the manual for assessing safety hardware needs to be updated based on research and testing and development which according to scholars could take decades. Already aging infrastructure including breakaway infrastructure will need to be upgraded to accommodate heavier weights of all vehicles."

You can watch the 10 Investigates Special “Unguarded” streaming now.