CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The federal government told states 20 years ago to stop using and remove a type of dangerous guardrail end cap, but more than 50 of these caps are still present on Charlotte highways.
Guardrails stop cars from careening off the road in a crash, but the end of those rails can act like the tip of a spear when a car hits them.
Protective end caps are designed to prevent that from happening, but one type of cap, the breakaway cable terminal, was red flagged by the federal highway administration 20 years ago. The cap has been linked to deaths and severe injuries.
Two North Carolina girls were killed in November 2014 when their car crashed into a guardrail with a cable terminal cap near Mount Airy.
Anchor Scott Wickersham uncovered a memorandum from 1994 that said a cable terminal "does not pass high-speed, head-on tests" and "will no longer be acceptable for installation" on major interstates.
In 1998, the feds told states the cable terminals were "too stiff to accommodate end-on hits, even at reduced speeds."
Wickersham found the end caps on Interstate 77 south near uptown and on Interstate 85 south at Billy Graham Parkway.
The Department of Transportation gave Channel 9 a document that lists 53 locations in and around Charlotte where there are guardrails with outdated end caps that need to be replaced.
State traffic engineer Kevin Lacy said his office was only directed to remove cable terminals when they are damaged in a crash or when a road is reconstructed and many haven't been since that 1998 mandate.
"If we were to replace everything each time a new standard came out, then that's all we would ever spend money on," Lacy said.
He said that while cable terminals are outdated, people should feel safe driving by them.
Dr. Dean Sicking, a traffic safety expert who invented several guardrail end caps still in use, disagrees.
"The serious injury and fatality rates on BCTS [cable terminals] is 4 or 5 times that of the best performing terminals on the market," said Sicking.
Sicking, who also created a barrier used by NASCAR to prevent driver deaths, said cable terminals can pierce through a car door.
"Typically they [the cars] spin out, slide sideways into the guardrail. It [ the cable terminal] punches through the door and impales the person inside. It's horrible," Sicking said.
The NCDOT is now dedicating a $1 million each year to actively replace them across the state—a process that could take years.
"I can't believe they would tolerate that, that citizens would not be up in arms if they continue to have these impacts," Sicking said.
Officials of NCDOT Division 10, which encompasses most of the Charlotte area, have already started tracking down the dangerous end caps still in use. If division officials are the first to apply for that new money, they will be the first in the state to have them replaced.
NCDOT also said the cable terminals on I-85 between mile markers 56 and 63 will be replaced during the I-85 widening project that started in May.
WSOC
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