“Grieving Father Campaigns to Eliminate Guardrail Equipment he Blames in Daughter's Death,” WCVB 5abc
May 19, 2017
BOSTON — Hannah Eimers’ car drifted off a Tennessee highway and struck a piece of safety equipment.
The 17-year-old hit a guardrail end terminal, and a piece of equipment designed to absorb the energy from a crash.
But instead, the metal rail behind the end terminal pierced her car like a spear, killing her instantly.
Now her grieving father, Stephen Eimers, is embarking on a campaign to get the brand of end terminal -- an X-Lite -- removed from the nation’s roads.
The crash is even more painful because Tennessee agreed just a few weeks before Hannah’s crash to stop buying new X-Lites. Now the state is going to remove them from its roads.
Eimers traveled to Massachusetts to talk with 5 Investigates’ Mike Beaudet about the X-Lite.
"Tennessee decided to collect more data,” Eimers said. “On the morning of Nov. 1, they got their last piece of data. But what they call data, I call Hannah.”
The problem is not isolated to Tennessee. Eimers has tracked crashes across the country involving the X-Lite and catastrophic if not fatal outcomes.