GRAND ISLAND, N.Y. - They're easy to miss. On a remote, half-mile stretch of Baseline Road in northern Erie County, drivers buzzed past a collection of four black-and-yellow guardrail devices on Tuesday afternoon without giving them a second thought.
The small devices, known as guardrail end terminals, are designed to soften the blow in the event of a high-speed crash. Here on Grand Island, two of the terminals face south at the intersection of Baseline and Alvin; two others face north at the intersection of Baseline and Webb. These terminals look exactly like the thousands of others across Erie County, so you can understand why drivers might not notice them.
The four guardrail end terminals on Baseline Road, however, are different.
They are "X-LITE" devices.
Twelve states, including New York, have decided to remove the X-LITE from state-owned roads due to safety concerns. The X-LITE's developer, Nebraska-based Lindsay Corporation, has faced intense public scrutiny after several high-profile traffic fatalities involving the device came to light over the past year. The company often points out that the X-LITE passed all federal safety tests and cannot protect against all factors in a crash, but that hasn't stopped grieving families from filing an onslaught of lawsuits against Lindsay Corporation. Instead of softening the blow of a crash, the suits allege, these devices are malfunctioning and causing deadly impact.
Erie County Department of Public Works Deputy Commissioner, Charles Sickler, said the county will replace the devices on Baseline Road as soon as possible, following the lead of the New York State Department of Transportation.
"If installed properly and activated properly — and that's the key word — I think they function all right," Sickler said, "but we'll error on the side of caution and remove them."
According to an invoice obtained by 2 On Your Side through a Freedom of Information Law request, the Department of Public Works paid a contractor nearly $10,000 in Oct. 2016 to install the four X-LITE devices on Baseline Road. At the time, the Lindsay X-LITE was essentially anonymous and remained approved for use by the state DOT.
One month later, though, media attention would skyrocket after a Western New York native named Hannah Eimers crashed into an X-LITE in Tennessee and died instantly. Hannah's father, Steve, crusaded against the X-LITE and became the face of the movement to remove them from all roads across the United States, including his daughter's birthplace of New York state.
2 On Your Side has aired and published at least a half-dozen reports on the X-LITE since Hannah Eimers' fatal crash, prompting state lawmakers to propose legislation banning the X-LITE. State Sen. Cathy Young (R-Olean), the head of the Finance Committee and a member of the Transportation Committee, has also introduced a bill demanding NYSDOT work with local agencies to determine how many X-LITES are located on locally-owned roads.
The four terminals located on Grand Island appear to be the only known X-LITE devices in Western New York, based on a 2 On Your Side review of public records obtained through FOIL requests. The Town of Cheektowaga, Town of Amherst, Niagara County, NYSDOT and the Thurway Authority were among those that confirmed there were no such devices located on their Western New York roads.
The contractor that installed the Grand Island X-LITE devices, Pavilion Drainage, confirmed Tuesday that it will remove those terminals within the next few weeks. Crews had been waiting for the temperatures to get above freezing in order to perform the work and replace the guardrail end pieces.
The county will have to spend another $10,000 or so to replace the X-LITEs with a new brand, according to Sickler. He said the X-LITE brand was only used on Baseline Road because of the extremely narrow geography and surrounding parking lots and side roads.
"In my eyes, again, I don't see that there's a safety concern now," Sickler said, emphasizing that the removal is purely precautionary. "The federal government as recently as May 2017 still approves them, and you can install them. (But) since New York is saying pull them out, we'll pull them out."
The closest X-LITEs installed by NYSDOT are located in the Southern Tier near Bath, N.Y, but they will soon be removed along with the rest of the 43 devices across the state.
This story has been reflected to remove a line in which we previously identified the X-LITE as the most controversial guardrail device ever produced. While the X-LITE has faced much public criticism, it is not the only end terminal device to ever face scrutiny.