A Changing of the Guardrail

“To the casual observer, which is to say virtually everyone, a guardrail is just a long wavy strip of steel, about a foot wide, set thirty inches or so off the ground, which keeps a car from going off the road. But, in reality, guardrails are carefully calibrated systems of interlocking parts, every one of which is critical to its function. They rely on complex physics to insure that a car that hits the end of a guardrail doesn’t get impaled, and that a car that hits it from the side can’t crash through. Some guardrail injuries result from antiquated designs, or designs that manufacturers know to be dangerous. Others result from botched installation.” Steve Eimers became an expert on guardrails for the worst possible reason. But his response to a personal tragedy could save lives. The New Yorker: One Man’s Quest to Fix Every Deadly Guardrail. (Alt link.) “In 2016, Steve Eimers’s daughter died when she hit a defective guardrail. Then he learned that the country was full of them.”