Mississippi DOT Stops Use of Faulty Guardrails

State transportation officials are investigating where faulty guardrails have been installed along Mississippi roadways.

Trinity Industries Inc. stopped shipments of its ET-Plus guardrails after a Texas jury ordered it to pay at least $175 million for misleading regulators. A whistleblower says the company changed the guardrails’ design but didn’t inform regulators for several years.

Mississippi Department of Transportation spokesman Jarrod Ravencraft tells The Clarion-Ledger the agency is putting together an inventory of exactly where the guardrails are.

Mississippi, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, Nevada, Oregon, Virginia, Vermont, Hawaii, Colorado, Connecticut, Arizona and Louisiana all banned the ET-Plus guardrail system.

And Dallas-based Trinity announced Friday that it will stop selling the ET-Plus system until testing is complete.

Spending records show Mississippi has paid Trinity Highway Products – a subsidiary of Trinity Industries – $1.2 million the past 10 years.

Ravencraft said any decision to remove existing railheads would be made after those tests were completed.

“We have not experienced any issues with this product in our state, and there have been no reports of any faulty ET-Plus guardrail end treatments installed on MDOT right of way,” Ravencraft said.