I'm the WUSA9 reporter on this story. There's something called "Frankensteined" guardrails. That's when you have Brand A of a guardrail attached to Brand B of an end terminal. If a car hits that, the guardrail doesn't collapse and becomes a spear which can kill a driver. With the help of a dad who lost his daughter in a guardrail crash, we spotted some of these on and outside the Beltway. MDOT is now launching a statewide inspection expected to be complete April 2023 and has already begun to replace the frankensteined rails that exist. Virginia is replacing them too, but has not announced a statewide inspection. I'll try to answer any redditors questions!

> the guardrail doesn't collapse and becomes a spear which can kill a driver

Wasn’t this an issue in Virginia about ten years ago, too? Might not have been quite that long, maybe 2014 or so, but I distinctly remember this issue occurring in the past.

I also somewhat remember that they had an issue either surveying the guardrails or going through the records to figure out which type of guard rail had been installed where.

The previous issue had to do with a particular brand of guardrail that was prone to failure. The problem here is when you mix and match two different brands. By themselves, they could work perfectly. But when Brand A is used with Brand B, then the guardrails and end terminals are prone to fail.

Sounds like we should shutdown the beltway until WMSC approves a return to service plan ensuring the guardrails are removed.

I would bet $1000 that shitting shutting(!) down the beltway would cause a greater loss of life, via delays for emergency vehicles, than these guard rails will cause in the time it takes to inspect and replace them.

Popping a squat on the beltway is a sure fire way to get smooshed. No doubt. 💩 🚘 ☠️

Hahahaha wow that was quite the typo 😂😂😂

Thats true, a reasonable compromise is for emergency services to be able to use the highway while WMSC ensures that systems are safe for everyday usage, and commuters cannot use the service until that occurs.

Shifting the entire commuting population into surface streets, with a significantly higher accidents/mile rate than the highway, is also not a good approach. It's kinda crazy to me how much people will ignore externalities because fuck the beltway or something.

I think you're missing a joke about the amount of hoops that metro has to go through to get metro up and running while people can just kill each other on the highway and no one blinks an eye.

Ahhhh that makes sense, thanks for explaining

Thank you for reporting on this!

You just got whooshed. The joke is that that's how WMATA is forced to operate even when it objectively makes the overall transportation system less safe.