Well, take a look at this guardrail.
You might not notice anything strange,
but 10 Investigates uncovered.
This is improperly installed,
and safety advocates say so is this one,
and this one and this one.
All of these safety advocates say are
improperly installed on Florida roads,
which means if you crash into one of them,
they are not going to work the
way that they're supposed to,
resulting in many times tragedy.
Now, because of our findings,
changes are coming.
You're watching 10.
Tampa Bay at 6 from Carolina lead.
And I'm Dave Wagner.
Ten of us. Here's Jennifer.
Titus is live for us
tonight in Pinellas County,
where, Jen,
you have a guardrail right behind you here.
Yeah, Dave, it's easy to find
one of these along Florida roads.
The Florida Department of
Transportation telling me there's
4700 miles of guardrails in the state
and because of our investigation,
there's going to be a statewide
review of every single one of them.
This investigation.
Ohh. It's called takes us thousands
of miles away from Florida.
To Belvedere, Illinois,
to sit down with this man,
I don't think your story
has truly ever been told,
as he shares for the first time ever.
What happened to him along this Florida Rd.
What was the date of the
accident? October 29th, 2010.
I remember we were driving,
we were going the speed limit.
Even though it says that we were speeding,
I'm like really sure that we
weren't going over the speed limit.
If not it was like a little bit over,
but like we swerved to miss a
like a Labrador or some big dog.
We go like this is the guardrail.
We swerve like this.
We touched the dirt and
the back left of the tire,
back tire of the truck,
slides a little
bit. The truck then hits this guardrail.
To my understanding girls are
supposed to crumble like an
accordion kind of give cushion.
I know it's metal.
Was not supposed to be soft,
but this thing impaled the
truck like a harpoon.
Charlie's leg impaled.
Then I woke up.
And I was without my left foot.
I was like, mom, did I look?
Did I lose my leg?
And she was like, yes, and you like?
She started bawling.
And I just Water Works on me.
Just, I just started crying.
I didn't think I was that hurt.
The weeks, the months,
the year since the accident.
Life has never been the
same on a scale of 1 to 10.
How much pain do you live with
on a daily basis now nowadays?
I would say. Good day about four,
let's say 4. On a bad day, when it's
cold and maybe I slipped or something,
or if I have an open sort, 27.
Here's the thing. It's a pain Charlie
says he shouldn't have because the
accident should have never happened.
I was mad because. If that guardrail
wasn't there, we would have been fine
when you get out of the hospital
and then you do learn that this
guardrail was improperly installed.
How did you find that out and and
what did you, how did you feel?
I felt cheated, kind of, and anger,
very, because of the whole situation,
Charlie filed this lawsuit
against the Florida Department of
Transportation after the accident.
The lawsuit claims the truck crashed
into a guardrail that Florida inmates
improperly installed and says the
state was negligent in failing to keep,
operate, repair and maintain
safe conditions on State Road 33.
If you're going to put
something to help people,
you gotta make Dang sure it's
built properly so it helps people.
The lawsuit ended up going nowhere.
But ten years since Charle's crash,
10 Investigates has located
dozens of improperly installed
guardrails across the state.
It makes me upset that I I got hurt
for nothing and nothing changed.
Nothing. We compiled a database of improperly
installed guardrails from Miami along
I4I-75, the site of this deadly
accident in Plant City back in January.
And just feet away from the Florida
Department of Transportation
headquarters in Tallahassee.
There's a bolt through the
rail where it shouldn't be.
If they cannot protect themselves
or the OR Governor DeSantis, how?
It's it's gotta change.
It's gotta come from their culture.
This is Steve Immers.
He helped us create our
database by randomly locating
guardrails throughout the state
and adding them to our list.
Hitting the end of a guardrail.
Hitting a guardrail can be a very
violent act. The outcomes can
be very spectacular and ugly,
and it's very easy to miss the
fact that one Bolt 1 bolt in
the wrong spot can kill you.
And upside down part? Can kill you.
Steve was an EMT, not an engineer.
He never went to school to study
guardrails. But Steve's life was
changed forever by one of these.
Knew my daughter's situation was
reportedly critical, I said.
Will there be any transports?
And they said no.
And I didn't need a police
officer to knock on my door.
At that point, I knew my daughter was dead.
Hannah died at 17 years old after
her car crashed into a guardrail.
She walked out of our lives on the
31st and we never saw her again.
She had a guardrail go through her head.
We were not even able to
see her one last time.
And it sent me down a rabbit
hole, but I'm not yet out of.
That rabbit hole has led him to
analyzing guardrails on roadways
across the country.
This is a systemic problem.
Within weeks of working with Steve,
our database grew to 72,
and I've looked at that tiny,
tiny percent. We're probably
talking hundreds of potentially
improperly installed guardrails. And
this guardrail is also missing
the initial perforations.
We sent our database to University
of Alabama. Birmingham.
Professor Kevin Schrum,
the structural engineer, agreed.
There are problems
for the most part.
Was able to confirm what he had said,
and I found a lot of other
things too that were wrong.
The fact that a lot of those errors
were very consistent in the same
error was a little bit alarming.
We then sent our database to F dot.
So are all those the emails that we sent
to F dot yeah? I think I counted.
There were like 10 of them,
but I I think you son, even more.
And we tried and tried again to get answers.
From F dot. We were able to track down
this video produced on the agency's
YouTube page where Durwood Shepherd,
I'm the state standard plans engineer
here in central office at the state
and the state Roadway Design Office,
talks about the significance of
installing guardrails correctly.
It's very important to install those
components the way they were crash tested.
And in the manner in which the installations
instructions told you do based on
what's provided from the manufacturer.
Because if you don't, you know.
Creating increased stiffness in the
system can lead to results like you
see on the screen here where the the
guardrail kinks and doesn't extrude
properly or becomes a penetration
hazard into the vehicle compartment.
A hazard Charlie Pike knows too well.
Why do I have to pay to walk?
Cause I got hurt because someone else
messed up and now I have to pay for it.
That stinks. You know,
at the at the most simplest of terms.
Like why do I have to pay?
To just be able to walk.
And back out here live.
While FDOT would not talk to us on
camera because of our findings,
they are now doing a statewide
review of every single inch of
guardrail on their roads to make sure
that they are properly installed.
Unfortunately, though,
this news comes too late for
the family of Hunter Burns.
Something just didn't sit right.
But it wasn't it wasn't like I was gonna
go and search for something, you know?
I don't know if the guardrail
would have saved Toner.
I I don't know that I can't speak for that.
But now, knowing what I know,
the guardrail felt miserably at being
able to protect any person on the roadway.
And tomorrow night we will
introduce you to his parents.
And while our safety experts call his
guardrail one of the most egregious
installs they have ever seen,
we will also take a look at other
guardrails we have labeled as Frankenstein,
a monster of a story that we
will have for you in Part 2 of
unguarded tomorrow night at 6.
For now, we're live in Pinellas County.
Jennifer Titus, 10, Investigates
if you want to check out a list of
guardrails that our safety advocate
found were improperly installed.
Go to our story at 10
tampabay.com/teninvestigates.