There have been multiple reports of deaths and/or agonizing, horrible injuries caused when motorists strike highway or road guardrails designed and manufactured by Lindsay Corp., the maker and designer of X-LITE guardrails.
The recent lawsuits filed in South Carolina and Tennessee allege that Lindsay Corp. was negligent in design of the X-LITE guardrails, which are supposed to absorb impact when vehicles hit them. Instead, the guardrails have been known to pierce through motor vehicles either killing drivers and passengers or severely injuring those in such vehicles.
In April 2017, a woman died in Spartanburg County, SC, when the SUV that her husband was driving went off the road running into the guardrail. On impact, the beams from the guardrail pierced through the vehicle’s exterior and frame puncturing all the way through to the backseat on the passenger side.
The wife of the driver sitting in the passenger seat suffered severe injuries and later died from injuries she sustained from the puncturing beam.
In another case, similar to the one in South Carolina, a driver of a motor vehicle that struck an X-LITE guardrail suffered a left leg amputation.
In Tennessee, the frequency of severe injuries and death caused by these defective guardrails has caused the state to order the removal of the guardrails from the roadways.
South Carolina Transportation officials have said that they are leaving the guardrails in place until they are damaged or outlive their lifespan. The expected lifespan of an X-LITE guardrail system is ten years.
According to the report of the South Carolina case, transportation officials have said that there are approximately 11,000 guardrails just in South Carolina of the X-LITE design. They were made by Lindsay Corp. Even on the X-LITE website, it says that the product “is designed and manufactured to reduce the number and severity of injury sustained from automobile accidents,” adding that no system “can prevent every tragedy.”
These X-LITE guardrails are standing on the sides of highways and roadways across America, including Illinois.
Kreisman Law Offices has been handling automobile accident case, product defect lawsuits, highway guardrail defect lawsuits and wrongful death cases for individuals, families and loved ones for more than 40 years in and around Chicago, Cook County and surrounding areas including Bensenville, Gurnee, Lake Bluff, Wonder Lake, Cary, Grayslake, Chicago (Bronzeville, Logan Square, Edgewater, Andersonville, Lake Calumet, South Shore), Lincolnshire, Vernon Hills and Buffalo Grove, Ill.
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