Our Guardrails Need Help

When we think of our roads we tend to think of the tarmac or bridges but not what's next to them: guardrails. We hope to never meet one but Steve Eimers knows more about them than he ever wanted to. After his daughter passed away in a car accident he learned the culprit was a guardrail that was banned but hadn't yet been uninstalled yet. Ever since he has traveled the U. S. inspecting our roads and speaking with politicians about how to improve safety and save lives. Recorded August 22, 2026 https://www.instagram.com/theguardrailguy/ https://www.youtube.com/@TheGuardrailGuy/videos Square Get up to $200 off Square hardware when you sign up at https://square.com/go/tire #squarepod #ad Hims Ready to reach your goals? Visit hims.com slash tire to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you Use Off The Record! and ALWAYS fight your tickets! For a 10% discount on your first case go to https://www.offtherecord.com/TST Want your question answered? Want to watch the live stream, get ad-free podcasts, or exclusive podcasts? Join our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thesmokingtirepodcast Instagram: https://www. Instagram.com/thesmokingtire https://www. Instagram.com/therealzackklapman

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Matt Farah?

  What up everybody? Welcome to the Smoking Tire Podcast. Today's episode is brought to you as always by Off the Record. We love Off the Record here at the Smoking Tire because they are looking out for us when we're out on the road. And by that, I really mean us, you and me. In fact, I got a case open with Off the Record right now. Can't wait to get those results back because I know what they will be. In a couple of months, I'll get a text message after having sufficiently forgotten that I was accused of speeding by the state of California. And that text is going to say, your case has been dismissed. And then I'll never have to think about it again. It will

• 0:37Matt Farah?

  be superb. OfftheRecord.com/TST. That's OfftheRecord.com/TST. And we will give you 10% off all legal services booked through Off the Record. All right, folks, this is a really interesting episode. Steve Imers, AKA The Guardrail Guy, is in studio. You maybe have seen this dude on TikTok, or Instagram, or YouTube, and he is a man on a mission, a man after my own heart, to be honest with you, because after his teenage daughter was killed in a car crash in which the guardrail speared the car, gruesome thing, he has been around

• 1:21Matt Farah?

  all over our country, pointing out and working with governments to fix deficient, irrelevant, and dangerous guardrails. I believe in safety on the road, and I really believe in safety on the road using technologies and methods that we already have today. One might call it analog. And some of the stuff that Steve talks about in this show is crazy that that's how they do things. It is a must-listen. It's The Guardrail Guy, Steve Eimers, on the Smoking Tire Podcast. Let's go. Hello, Steve.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  Hello, Matt.

• 2:00Matt Farah?

  When did you get your own merch made? I like your shirt. Your shirt is good.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  It is?

• 2:05Matt Farah?

  Your shirt is good. I like, I like the implication. I like the safety colors. Your shirt is good. I need, can I buy one on your website?

• 2:13Speaker 01

  My website's down. I gotta get it.

• 2:15Matt Farah?

  You and, you and me both, brother.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  I've gotta get, work on my, I'm here for some business advice.

• 2:22Matt Farah?

  You have, no, you have bigger fish to fry. I just asked you, you were, you were just telling me about your road trip from Tennessee where you live. I didn't realize that when I extended an invite to come do the show, that you would drive here.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  No, I didn't drive.

• 2:35Matt Farah?

  Oh, you didn't?

• 2:36Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:36Matt Farah?

  Oh, you flew?

• 2:37Speaker 01

  So I had a viewer who's been bugging me for about a year. He's like, he's like, I work at UDOT. I've worked at UDOT for, so he's

• 2:48Matt Farah?

  That would be Utah DOT.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Utah DOT. He had worked at Utah DOT, and he had left them. He's like, you have to come to Utah. You've gotta come see our guardrails. I want you to take a look and see what we find. So

• 3:00Matt Farah?

  He was like, I think our guardrails are particularly shit.

• 3:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:06Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  And, I mean, they were. And the sad part is, is probably Utah DOT is in the top 20% of positive guardrails in the United States.

• 3:18Matt Farah?

  So best case scenario, they're like, bad. And worst case scenario, it's complete nightmare.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Yes. So one of the things we found, and I was shocked. So I'm like, I'm doing the inspection of guardrails thing. I'm doing the touristy thing. I'm like, where's, so we're going through Park City. Beautiful, absolutely gorgeous.

• 3:38Matt Farah?

  Lovely place.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  I, we go up through Big Cottonwood Canyon. We get to, I forget what the name of the pass is, but Steve thinks he's gonna be smart and decides to climb to the top of the mountain at 10,500 feet. So I'm like, laying flat halfway up. And I'm like, all right, I've only got a little bit more. But every little bit more, but was quite a bit more.

• 3:59Matt Farah?

  No, a hike at altitude.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  10,500.

• 4:01Matt Farah?

  Yeah, no, to go, to pop out of Tennessee and go that, like, day one or day two, that's a struggle. I've been there, brother.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  I made it to the top.

• 4:09Matt Farah?

  Did you? I bailed on ours. I think we were at like 9,800 feet hiking out of side of Park City. And I was like, honey, today's not the day, baby.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  I was, I made it.

• 4:19Matt Farah?

  You're a champ.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  So we get down into Park City, and I said, can we look at some of the Olympic venues? And we go up to Olympic Park. High jump. It's all right there. The bobsled track. And oh my gosh. We're talking probably 100 to 200 missing bolts.

• 4:43Matt Farah?

  In the bobsled track?

• 4:44Speaker 01

  On the road.

• 4:45Matt Farah?

  Oh, on the road?

• 4:46Speaker 01

  So we're about to invite them.

• 4:48Matt Farah?

  I thought you were, I thought you were sort of like, as maybe a bit, inspecting the bobsled track. Okay, okay, you're talking about the road.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  The road. So you pull into Olympic Park, and the guardrails are literally falling apart. I touch one of the bolts and it drops on the ground.

• 5:05Speaker 02

  Why are the bolts missing? Because people steal them? Are they missing because they just, when someone hits them, they don't put them back?

• 5:12Speaker 01

  So what it is, is this is an old style. In some wealthier communities, they want uppity guardrails. And so they'll use this type of steel called Corten. The problem is, of course, Corten is a rusted steel.

• 5:31Matt Farah?

  So it'll look better? I mean, better to some people?

• 5:35Speaker 02

  Williams and Sonoma pot, if they turn into a guardrail?

• 5:38Speaker 01

  Exactly. I'm like, it's a guardrail. You can't have an uppity guardrail. And what happens is they rust away. You have to check them on a regular basis. The feds have said, don't use it for about 25 years. And in certain wealthier communities, they use them, but you have to check them. And they have not been checked probably since the last Olympics.

• 6:01Matt Farah?

  Yeah, right?

• 6:02Speaker 01

  And so

• 6:04Matt Farah?

  So the bolt just rusts and falls and just disappears?

• 6:07Speaker 01

  The guardrail literally rusts away.

• 6:10Matt Farah?

  Oh, that's good.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  And so I had the opportunity with social media, with my legacy media footprint, I can call up Carlos Bruseras, the head of UDOT, and say, hey, I need an appointment. We need to talk. And so I was able to share with him, well, look, we got guardrails that are literally falling apart. But Utah DOT, honestly, we visited Utah, went up into Idaho, crossed over into Wyoming, went down to, through Arizona, and into Nevada. Nevada was classic. So, you know, you're setting up a shot. And here I have what's called a Frankenstein guardrail. That's where you miss, where you mix parts.

• 6:51Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 6:52Speaker 01

  So I have a location where they've mixed the parts together. And the building in the background is Nevada DOT.

• 7:01Matt Farah?

  Yeah, it's like three posts back on your Instagram. Yeah, yeah.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  And it's like

• 7:04Matt Farah?

  You're just screaming at them like, yo, it's here. It's right here.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  So you have to, you have to balance a little bit of humor, a little bit of

• 7:12Matt Farah?

  That's true. You do some bits when they arrive. How, you're obviously a man on a serious mission.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:21Matt Farah?

  Tell me about the mission.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  So I know nothing about guardrails. On October 31st, 2016, go to bed. And I, my daughter, who was 17 at the time, her name's Hannah, is, she's very talented into costumes, cosplay, was, I mean, we're from rural East Tennessee. And she somehow got herself a internship gig on Burt Reynolds' final movie. She knew Burt. She called him Burt. It was interesting because like, well, it's like, well, Burt Reynolds, Burt Reynolds.

• 7:59Matt Farah?

  Reynolds, all right.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  Ariel Winter.

• 8:01Matt Farah?

  What was his final movie?

• 8:03Speaker 01

  The Last Movie Star.

• 8:04Matt Farah?

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  And Hannah, so my daughter Hannah, I'll get back to the Burt Reynolds angle.

• 8:12Matt Farah?

  That's a sidebar, yeah.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we met Burt. She goes off, she's headed back to school at 17, hits a guardrail that had been banned before her crash. About seven days before her crash, there'd been a series of fatal spearing crashes. Hannah hits a crash at about 6:00 AM in the morning. He goes through her car. She's killed instantly. The girl beside her walks away without a scratch.

• 8:39Matt Farah?

  Oh, man.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  You have that happen to your kid, you're gonna be, you're gonna be asking, what explains my daughter being, I worked EMS, DRT, while the other dead right there? Well, the girl beside her is all walkie talkie?

• 8:54Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  And so that question, I tell people, if you ever, Alice in Wonderland, yeah, I went down the rabbit hole. The things got curioser and curioser. I'm to the point where here I am in California. I am what's called a Key Tam fraud relator on behalf of the state of California, because I ended up uncovering just massive undocumented changes, testing fraud. All kinds of issues.

• 9:21Matt Farah?

  All in guardrails?

• 9:23Speaker 01

  In the device that was involved in Hannah's crash.

• 9:25Matt Farah?

  Oh, specific, a specific type of guardrail.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  But then, you know, we get, you solve a problem. I mean, I got almost all of these banned in the United States. And then I go to Canada, and then I go back and I say, listen, now you need to get them off the road. You can get Caltrans to spend $20 million, Florida to spend a million, get Manitoba. If Manitoba is listening to a guy from rural east Tennessee with, you know, 10 kids, 30 chickens, and a bunch of ducks and hedgehogs, they're not doing that because I'm passionate. They're doing it because I'm right.

• 10:02Matt Farah?

  Yeah. What is the, what is the type of device that you got banned in places and are trying to get banned in other places?

• 10:08Speaker 01

  So I'm gonna, how I'm gonna answer that is, I'm a fraud relater on behalf of the state of California involving fraud involving the Lindsay X light guardrail. So that's how I'm gonna answer that, just because there are some.

• 10:23Matt Farah?

  There's a legal thing happening there.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  You've, you can interpret things quite well.

• 10:28Matt Farah?

  Okay. So, all right. So, can you, are you allowed to break down what that, what you, the words that you just said about you, the fraud in the state of California, can you break down what that means exactly?

• 10:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I'm a guy from, I'm driving.

• 10:45Matt Farah?

  From Tennessee.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  I have a pair of calipers. You know, I'm one of the, probably the only people ever to be threatened with criminal contempt of court because they said, well, he's not smart enough to have figured this out. But what I did was I, I went and started measuring stuff. Took calipers, took a ruler. I'm like, these are different from that. And started collecting crashes and comparing, you know, just basic field craft. I mean, comparing the devices of the same, from the same manufacturer, and they were different. And, and I could not find any kind of documentation where this was ever disclosed.

• 11:28Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 11:29Speaker 02

  So there was inconsistency in the product, even though it was, even though it was all called the ABC guardrail from.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  It was all called the X light, but when I looked at what was crash tested compared to what was sold.

• 11:43Matt Farah?

  Whoa.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  And what was installed. And then I started digging into it and like, there were certain things I could, I would not disclose because if I did, people would have said, Steve, you're crazy. There's no way. Things like taking salesmen from as far away as California and New England and bringing them into Tennessee. And this is on a public court docket. That was the only time I was willing to start discussing it and dressing up as a salesman and driving around with saws and sledgehammers and crowbars and hacking into well over 100 locations in the state of Tennessee. Whether this happened in California, I don't know. But what I found was just stunning.

• 12:27Matt Farah?

  Back up. What, what is that? What happened? People coming from California to Tennessee?

• 12:31Speaker 01

  The company wanted to cover up the fact that they had not installed a bolt at the seventh post, which is critical according to their patent for function. And I was seeing all these, I thought Tennessee doesn't, Tennessee DOT doesn't know what they're doing. Neither does North Carolina.

• 12:49Matt Farah?

  These companies came in, once you started.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  No, before.

• 12:54Matt Farah?

  Before.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  Before my daughter's crash.

• 12:56Matt Farah?

  Uh huh.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  And ended up going and hacking into well over 100 locations.

• 13:03Matt Farah?

  To try and cover it up.

• 13:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I have the airfare. I have the, I have the spreadsheets and.

• 13:09Matt Farah?

  And so you, in the beginning, you said, before Hannah's crash, the, the guardrail was banned seven days before the crash.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:19Matt Farah?

  So, so, and then you're saying in that period between the ban and the crash is when they were.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  No, no, this was, this was years before. I mean, the testing, so a lot of this fraud predated Hannah's crash. So what happened in Hannah's case, so the company got their device approved. They sent in the testing that would have been banned in 48 hours, two days before it banned. It's banned permanently because it's inferior testing. They did their own self-certification. So they set up a corporation, and I've got a federal law to ban this, as they set up a corporation, self-certified their own product, but waived half the test, changed it consistently throughout testing.

• 14:03Matt Farah?

  This is so like, when you have like, you know, big government contracts and these big companies that are installing infrastructure, but there's, it's not like people are like using the infrastructure, right? Like the guardrail, it sits there. Like it, it's used, if someone hits it, but like, it's, it's not like if you installed it sort of shoddily and didn't check very often, that there would be an uproar from the public because it's, well, it's there. Like, you know, why would, why would anyone look or really care? So it's gotta be like incredibly easy to do shitty work and/or skim, right?

• 14:47Speaker 01

  It has been, yes. And that's what I'm working to try to change that, whether it's through these key tam fraud cases in Tennessee and California, or through the videos, holding these companies accountable. When, because of the platform now, I'll get somebody who contacts me, says, hey, my loved one was killed here. And I always ask them, what was their name? Tell me about them. Tell me about the crash. And then I try to direct them to an attorney because we have, these big corporations do a cost benefit analysis. And I'm trying to change that math.

• 15:28Matt Farah?

  Folks, taking a quick break because support is coming in today from Square. You know Square. It's the business platform that helps sellers become neighborhood favorites. Whether you're gearing up for a busy season or just trying to keep up with everyday demand, Square keeps your business running smoothly from payments, POS and online orders to inventory, staffing and more, all in one place. So you can focus on your customers and not your to-do list. Ready to grow or streamline how you run things? Because Square is offering listeners up to $200 off Square hardware when you sign up at square.com/go/tire. Again, square.com/go/tire. Yeah. Square is awesome, right? When you're a local business

• 16:13Matt Farah?

  like I have at Westside Collector Car Storage, this stuff is important because I am off running videos, making podcasts, and I can't be at the shop all the time. But I can log in with the backend at Square and know what is going on. And the, the experience is totally seamless. And from a customer perspective, right? This is an easy thing to use. The customers like it, the POS, the credit cards, the Apple Pay, the invoicing, they love it too, right? Because Square brings payments, POS, inventory and everything, all in one place. So business owners just go to one home. They don't have to juggle a bunch of

• 16:55Matt Farah?

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• 17:36Matt Farah?

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• 18:20Matt Farah?

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• 19:01Matt Farah?

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• 19:40Speaker 01

  I'm trying to make it very expensive.

• 19:42Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Crank up the cost.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  It shouldn't be.

• 19:45Matt Farah?

  If they're gonna do the math, then you play their game and make them pay.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:50Matt Farah?

  I mean, not that you wouldn't rather have the loved one, but.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:53Matt Farah?

  If the loved one.

• 19:53Speaker 01

  I would much rather have my daughter back.

• 19:55Matt Farah?

  Of course.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  The issue is that I can't. And if I don't do what I'm doing, the company looks and says, well, this is cheap.

• 20:05Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  And so when you falsify, when you use Photoshop to alter your test results, alter your ratios.

• 20:14Matt Farah?

  Yikes.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  When you bring bolts in from China and pass them off as having been melted and manufactured in the United States, I think America should be furious when it kills somebody in Hockenbach, California, or McMinn County, Tennessee, or Peabody, Massachusetts.

• 20:33Matt Farah?

  Is it, is you find, is it laziness? Is it?

• 20:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:42Matt Farah?

  Ignorance, is it, you know, when you talk about a rail that's quote Frankensteined, is that just because it's like, eh, it's what we had laying around, so we just put it together and it looked right, or is, is there a, like, you know, when you build a building, you make a blueprint, is there a set of plans somewhere that has a Frankenstein rail on it?

• 21:03Speaker 01

  Well, yes and no.

• 21:06Matt Farah?

  Okay, sorry, I'm gonna ask four questions at once, if so, I'm sorry.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  No, there, there is nothing that allows for this, a lot of it is a total lack of education, plus individuals not understanding the significance of, so like, a bolt in a rail, through a rail, like, you don't want it there because it has to function a certain way, and, but there's, say, a hole there, and you, you have to put a bolt there through, say, what's called a blockout, which kind of offsets the, the rail from the post, but the hole's there, you're using a bolt, so the natural tendency is pass it through the hole, but then they don't, um, put a sticker over it, so I made a video, gets 16 million views, and it prompted the company to put a sticker over the rail, well, there was

• 21:55Speaker 01

  a fatal crash, there've been multiple fatal crashes, where that bolt had been through the rail, including one in College Station, Texas, the kid hits it, he's speared, and it was because somebody was ignorant, a lot of it is just pure ignorance, a lot of it is on the man.

• 22:11Matt Farah?

  I see hole bolt go through hole.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Yes, or, you know, a kid here, Liam, in California, a young boy, he hits a guardrail called the Trinity Slotted Rail Terminal, the SRT, second panel can be, has to be installed in a proper orientation, the problem is, it has it this side up, it's installed upside down, along with about 850 other locations in California, and Liam is spared, he survives.

• 22:43Matt Farah?

  Oh, these things?

• 22:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:44Matt Farah?

  Oh yeah, we see so many, this is like, literally, if you just like, think in your head of guardrail, like, with, with, with sort of a curved end plate on it, that looks almost like a mini knight's shield.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:57Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  That thing does not absorb kinetic energy, it, um, can be installed wrong, the second panel is often installed upside down and backwards, it's a 50/50 shot, I just recently got 30 of them, um, repaired in the state of Massachusetts.

• 23:17Matt Farah?

  That seems like such an easy dumb thing to fix.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  Offset one bolt, offset one bolt, and it's gotta, it's gotta be installed properly.

• 23:25Matt Farah?

  Yeah, like, that's like, here's, here's, here's, I mean, what you're, what you're talking about is something that, I mean, and, and, you know, the fact that your daughter was killed, and I mean, and all these other people, it makes it, but like, much, much worse, but, we, I talk about this all the time, like, where we're, we're rapidly pivoting to try to get self-driving cars going on, under the guise of safety, that it's gonna make things safer, while like, fully ignoring, like, easy things to fix and change, like, we're, you're, I'm, I've been saying that we can make so many places safer with like, paint, like, paint.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  Signs and lines.

• 24:07Matt Farah?

  Signs and lines, 100%, they, they did it in my own street, behind my own house, they painted some fucking lines, and the behavior of the drivers completely changed, like, outside my own home, and we do, I talk about with like, with concrete, with like, narrowing, with trees, like, like, we have all this shit, it works other places, instead, we're like, no, no, data overlords, and leave the infrastructure alone, forget what we know, and just have a computer drive around it, and isn't that fucking crazy?

• 24:37Speaker 01

  I always say. I get a lot of people that contact me, because of my social media, I had a mom in Utah, reach out to me, Little Sahara, it's, uh, just out in the desert, and she says, I lost my daughter in April, and I, she says, will you look at it, and we have a little bit of time, so we swing out there, and there's two crosses where Ava and Xander died, and there's two, another cross from a kid that was crashed there in 2023, then two more crosses from, uh, a crash in 2020.

• 25:16Matt Farah?

  What?

• 25:17Speaker 01

  In the same.

• 25:18Matt Farah?

  In the same fucking place?

• 25:19Speaker 01

  And there had been, they just, after the most recent crash, 17-year-old and a 15-year-old, put up curve signage, and this is the Department of Interior, and this is a road that has been in dispute almost since the Civil War, because like, the Civil War.

• 25:40Matt Farah?

  The road has been in dispute?

• 25:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, because it's owned by the Department of Interior, Utah DOT would like to take it over.

• 25:45Matt Farah?

  Oh.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  In 2003.

• 25:47Matt Farah?

  Is it in a park?

• 25:47Speaker 01

  No, it's just in Department of Interior land.

• 25:50Matt Farah?

  Oh, like BLM land or something?

• 25:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so, they, um, they finally put up curve warning signs, but then, so like, out here, and I actually made a video, I, this is an urban area, so you use a different type of signage, it's high vis signage, because you have, uh, streetlights, they put high vis signage at the location where five people lost their lives, meaning, so at night, you're gonna hit that with your headlights, and it is going to blind you.

• 26:24Matt Farah?

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• 27:09Matt Farah?

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• 29:03Speaker 01

  You know, you started talking about signs and lines, it's very evocative, because I am talking with Ava's mom.

• 29:10Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  And signs and lines very might, well, may have saved this little girl.

• 29:16Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  And her friend Xander.

• 29:17Matt Farah?

  Sure.

• 29:18Speaker 01

  And it's just.

• 29:19Matt Farah?

  I mean, just the right, the right sign.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  And now, the right sign, they're gonna, they're gonna take, what?

• 29:25Matt Farah?

  That's crazy, I've never thought about the difference between high and low vis signs.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  But they're very, yeah, it's very simple, one of the, one of the things, like, in Utah, I love this, because there's a type of guardrail that is bright yellow, and it goes viral every three months, it's South Korean rollerball guardrail.

• 29:41Matt Farah?

  Hmm, I've seen it, yeah.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's in.

• 29:44Matt Farah?

  I've got a photo of it, it's neat, yeah.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's really interesting, pulling up, because this is really fascinating.

• 29:49Matt Farah?

  It's called rollerball guardrail?

• 29:51Speaker 01

  I don't know, South Korean roller guardrail.

• 29:53Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  You should be able to find it.

• 29:55Matt Farah?

  Yeah, it's, uh, it turns the road into like bumper bowling, kind of.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  It looks like it, but, so. Doing what I do, I get those every, every few months, somebody sends it to me, you gotta take a look at this, this could take, it works. It's a quirky type of guard rail that's probably never going to get widely accepted here in the United States. There's one or two installations across the United States, but I hear about an installation in Australia, reach out to Austrods. Say, tell me about this install, how's it work? And they said, well, put it at a high crash location, gets hit every week. We installed it a year ago and it's not been

• 30:39Speaker 01

  hit since. Cause it's got big, yeah, that was my theory. So I go to Utah DOT, I'm talking to them, they're gonna do a motorcycle study. One of the frustrating things for me is about a third of the people that die hitting guard rails are motorcyclists. And I mean, I had the head of federal highway, he's like, well, he's on a motorcycle.

• 31:00Matt Farah?

  Just, just instantly dismiss it.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  Instantly dismiss it. I, I think it's, you know, if we cut that by 10%, that's 30 to 40 families that are hurt every single year.

• 31:10Matt Farah?

  Yeah, what, well.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  And so they're dismissing it. So I convince, I'm like, this, I think this thing is not getting hit because it's bright yellow. They end up painting a bunch of guard rails in Utah at high crash locations involving motorcyclists, bright yellow, powder coating them, guess what happens? Crashes go to zero.

• 31:30Matt Farah?

  Yellow, yellow.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  Paint.

• 31:33Matt Farah?

  Do we give, give control of everywhere we go in a car to Elon Musk, or we pull out a fucking can of yellow? That's like, I, it's gotta be so infuriating.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  It is. And it is, I mean, I'm talking about things like putting a sticker.

• 31:48Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  Isabella Alonso.

• 31:50Matt Farah?

  What, when, when can, the bolts, you said sticker on the bolts, what is that about? Cause they come out and the sticker holds them in?

• 31:58Speaker 01

  No, no, it's just like, if you have a location where you shouldn't be putting a bolt.

• 32:02Matt Farah?

  Oh, cover the hole with a sticker.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  Cover a hole up. I get a sticker on the Veltier soft stop at post number two. The install failure rate goes from almost, like in the state of Georgia, goes from about 80 or 90% to zero overnight. Cause there's a sticker that says, do not put a bolt through this hole.

• 32:22Matt Farah?

  That's amazing. Like, oh, common sense, basics.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. Hunter Burns.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, low tech versus high tech. And these, these things you're talking about are much cheaper probably, you know, the amount of capital that goes into making autonomous cars and all the technology.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  A lot of it.

• 32:38Speaker 02

  You could probably replace a lot of guard rails and paint a lot of stuff with that money.

• 32:42Matt Farah?

  Who was it? Who did the wall ride in NASCAR?

• 32:45Speaker 02

  Chastain?

• 32:46Matt Farah?

  Was it Ross Chastain, I think, you remember that video?

• 32:49Speaker 01

  No.

• 32:50Matt Farah?

  And, and you know, and when you're playing video games as a kid and you're like, you're playing a racing game and you're trying to like, at the finish, trying to beat everybody, you just hold the throttle down and ride the wall, you know, and you just crash your way across. A guy did that a couple of years ago in real life, in a NASCAR race. And it was one of the most incredible things you've ever seen. And also it was so effective, they banned it within 20 minutes of the end of that race. They gave him the victory and they were like, nice job. No one's ever doing that again. But as a bit, if you got him out in a NASCAR and had him do, oh yeah, just show Steve real quick. Cause it is, even if you don't know racing, you can watch this shit and you go.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  That's all Dr. Sicking's safer barrier there.

• 33:37Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah. He, he goes from, you know, whatever it was.

• 33:42Speaker 02

  Like ninth to fourth or something like that.

• 33:45Matt Farah?

  To, to put himself into the final, right along the entire safer barrier. But imagine it was the rollers.

• 33:52Speaker 02

  Right.

• 33:53Matt Farah?

  He could have, he could have won. He could have won. He could have won and his car would have looked alright.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  I don't know if we'll ever, like this is a quirky guard rail. I don't even know if it's the best thing, but the bright yellow without a doubt. I mean, can you imagine?

• 34:07Matt Farah?

  Lesson, isn't it?

• 34:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:09Matt Farah?

  These are cool. If there's, if there's a gif somewhere of a car actually hitting that and like what?

• 34:15Speaker 01

  There's some crash test videos.

• 34:16Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Is it, is it substantially better than a traditional guard rail in terms of impact?

• 34:22Speaker 01

  It handles, so our traditional guard rails, that's one of the horrific things is they only protect a certain class of vehicles. Much of what we have would only withstand about a 4,400 pound pickup, an old style one. One of the things I did.

• 34:39Matt Farah?

  What pickups are on sale that are under 4,400 pounds right now? The Maverick maybe?

• 34:44Speaker 02

  Maybe the Maverick.

• 34:45Matt Farah?

  Maybe a base Maverick? That's probably it.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  They don't work with EVs. One of the things I did.

• 34:49Matt Farah?

  Video of the Rivian going through the guard rail, is that your video or such?

• 34:53Speaker 01

  Well, I'll tell you the story behind that. So the Department of Defense contracts with the University of Nebraska. They're gonna crash test EVs and see how our barriers do versus EVs. Well, the Tesla fails miserably. And this is more a barrier problem than a EV problem.

• 35:11Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I, I mean, I can't believe I'm saying this, but to give Tesla credit, which is something I really never do, that you're, it is a barrier problem, not a car problem.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  So the Rivian.

• 35:22Matt Farah?

  Yeah. The Rivian one was insane. The guard rail explodes. It doesn't go through. It's like pulverized.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  So everyone in the industry knows about this crash testing for about six months. And they're like, this, we've got to get this released. We've got to figure out how to release it. This is a real problem. It's gonna be a major national, international news story. And it just keeps getting punted down the road. So the National Science Foundation's Transportation Research Board is meeting in Washington DC. And I look up what the requirements are for news media. And I look at my social media, but I'm like, guess what I am? I'm news media. So I go and I get credentialed as news media. I go into the event and I'm not necessarily, I, there are a lot of people within the barrier industry that like me.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  There's a lot of people that wish they could say what I say. And then there's a lot of people that wouldn't mind seeing me go away for a long time and wouldn't necessarily care how it happens.

• 36:22Matt Farah?

  Yeah. I mean, you might cost them a lot of money.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've cost the industry a lot of money. But what I do is I get credentialed as news media. I know that Nebraska is gonna be presenting this study. And they get to the study, I pull out my smartphone and I put it up and I have a camera recording. I've worked with Andy Piradi at WA and F in Atlanta. Like Andy, record this live stream. I'll give you an international news story, I guarantee. And so we, I put my phone up, that instantly gives everyone in the room permission, and they put their phone up. I start recording. And at the end, they say, well, does anyone have any questions? And Steve raises his hand.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  And I'm like, I have a question. I said, are you prepared to release this to the public? Congressman Tim Burchett and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee of the United States Congress, because I am walking out of here and putting it up on YouTube. And I guarantee you, this is gonna be a national news story within a couple of days. They said, well, we haven't quite discussed it. I'm like, you better get to discussing real fast. Cause it is, the cat is out of the bag. And nobody was trying to conceal anything. They were just like, this is gonna be a really big deal. But, you know, I've been taught, if you're gonna have to swallow a frog, don't stare at that sucker very long because it just, it's not gonna get any more palatable. And so I just forced their hand. So that

• 37:46Speaker 01

  came out because I released it. And Nebraska, they're great guys. Ron Fowler, Bob Ilerber, great guys. They just knew that, oh goodness, we just grabbed a third rail. And, but you had to release it. So what I did was release it. Couple, a week and a half later, Nebraska Foley releases it. And pretty soon, the United States Senators, the Transportation Chair, Jen Homedy, I love Jen, interesting character. They are going to EV crash testing. And we start looking for solutions on how to solve this problem versus just keeping it quiet,

• 38:27Speaker 01

  keeping it quiet. You keep stuff quiet, you get stuff like what happened to my daughter. You get stuff like what happened at Penn State or Ohio State.

• 38:35Matt Farah?

  Sensational, disturbing, gory crashes.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So, so that.

• 38:41Matt Farah?

  So does, is anyone doing anything?

• 38:47Speaker 01

  With?

• 38:48Matt Farah?

  With making these barriers better for the, the weight of modern cars and the size of today's cars?

• 38:55Speaker 01

  They're doing a lot of research, making sure that we, that we can have a ready fire aim.

• 39:01Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  Strategy. My friend, Dr. Dean Sicking, who we talked about, you showed the crash. That was safer barrier, it was Dean's. Dean is doing stuff like testing at 77 and a half miles an hour.

• 39:14Matt Farah?

  Oh, instead of the old ones, 62.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I mean, I did a video where. It's 80 miles an hour. Where Hannah crashed, the system fully telescoped, but there was still 38 miles per hour of kinetic energy in that car. And the posted speed was 70, Hannah was doing about 65.

• 39:33Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 39:34Speaker 01

  We have to be testing for the real world.

• 39:36Matt Farah?

  Well, you can't, if I was building this building, and I was trying to get a permit to put 6,000 pounds, you know, on each tray of these lifts, they would make me actually have the appropriate strength thing to handle what I actually wanted to put on the lifts. Like, they just don't have that same level of self-accountability when it comes to, like, if it would, like, like, just, you know, when I built this building, they made me redo the sidewalk just in front of my building for the new ADA rules, which was fine. It was like, less of a, of an angle, whatever. I did it, no problem. But they don't

• 40:19Matt Farah?

  have to do the bit around it. The bits on either side of my building, I had to blend right back to the bad, non-ADA sidewalk. So they don't hold us private business owners, or, excuse me, I should say, they don't hold themselves and their public works to the same standards of inspection and upgrade that they hold private business owners to.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  They can replace them kind. I just was at a location in Utah where the kid hit a guard rail that was a blunt end, meaning there's no kind of anchor, no kind of energy absorption. I mean, I have a magazine with me, it's in my, in my bag here, from 1961. This is a brand-new problem. I have a, breaking news, June 1961, Popular Science, saying, hey, we shouldn't be using these blunt ends. And two weeks ago, a kid in Utah hits it, and I do not know how.

• 41:12Matt Farah?

  66 years later.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  Oh, but the guidance goes back as far as 1926. We're talking 100 years later.

• 41:21Matt Farah?

  That's crazy.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  And, you know, I have recent, three recent crashes, two in Ohio, one in Utah, that, involving unanchored blunt ends. But what can happen is, if you had to bring this up to the modern standard, the government can replace it in kind, in perpetuity.

• 41:43Matt Farah?

  That's just so crazy.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  And one of the things I'm really pushing is sovereign immunity. We just had a bus crash in Tennessee. 30 kids injured, two girls that are dead.

• 41:55Matt Farah?

  That's terrible.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  In Tennessee, yeah, absolutely terrible. And have that mom reach out to you. Tennessee has sovereign immunity caps of $300,000 per incident, or part, no, 300,000 per person cap, max. Those are $2,007, never adjusted for inflation, 700,000 for the incident. There were seven medevacs, 30 kids wounded, two dead. And the maximum payout is $700,000. I mean, this is absurd.

• 42:26Matt Farah?

  That's, that's.

• 42:27Speaker 01

  And so, a lot of it is, they don't, they can't be held accountable.

• 42:33Matt Farah?

  What, it's, I mean, who in government is, is really motivated to fix this problem?

• 42:44Speaker 01

  Recently, so, one of, I cannot believe, like, the access I've been afforded. I mean, some of it, I mean, I come from a faith perspective. I had, one day I was, and this has been for the last 10 years, I have been given access to the highest levels of our government. Recently inspected guardrails with Congressman Tim Burchett on the field, Congressman John Rose. Tim Burchett, from Tennessee 2, Tennessee District 2, he seems to be really motivated to help with some really simple things. Tim believes in Bigfoot, Tim believes in UFOs, he's on the UFO Committee head. Very interesting character. I love

• 43:28Speaker 01

  Tim. He's, but he, he's.

• 43:31Speaker 02

  I agree with him on the second one, Bigfoot, but whatever.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  The Bigfoot one, okay. Tim's a great guy.

• 43:37Matt Farah?

  Sure.

• 43:37Speaker 01

  But, Tim has been very motivated. One of the things, I owe my fidelity to the next victim, so I'm gonna work with my friend Andrew Cuomo, I'm gonna work with my friend Joe Biden, I'm gonna work with my friend Donald Trump, because I owe my fidelity to the next victim, not to a political ideology.

• 43:54Matt Farah?

  I mean, it's, it's crazy to think that fucking guardrails could be political.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  Everything could be political.

• 44:01Matt Farah?

  But we are, but of course it can, so.

• 44:03Speaker 01

  I just met for about 20, 25 minutes with Senator Mark Kelly. We need, we need a lot more Mark Kellys, and not because he's a Democrat, not because he's.

• 44:12Speaker 02

  No, he's smart.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  He's smart.

• 44:14Speaker 02

  Super smart.

• 44:15Speaker 01

  He's an engineer.

• 44:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  And there's three engineers in the Congress or Senate. So Congressman, or Senator Kelly understood the literal nuts and bolts of this. So one of the things that I'm just telling every high-level engineer, like, I don't, I don't care what your political party is. We need you in the state senates, the state assemblies, the Senate, the Congress, we need engineers because they actually understand the nuts, the literal nuts and bolts. So I had an incredible experience with Kelly where I'm meeting with him, I had an email that talked about, it was an internal email, a lot of people have no courage, so they pass

• 45:01Speaker 01

  it to me, because, because they know I'm, I'm like, I don't care. I get an internal email, and it says, what will our liability be when the rail folds over and kills and rams, somebody goes through the door, paraphrasing it, and kills and rams. We wouldn't want the trial attorneys to get a hold of this testing. They'll say, we put a defective product in the real world that we basically, we knew what we were doing. This was sent in 2005. And I probably have 105 documented spearing crashes involving that product.

• 45:32Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  And Kelly was livid. And one of the kids at the end of the table had had his leg cut off. His friend had been cut in half by that guardrail. And so Kelly, he's like, I need that email. And I'm like, oh, I need that for my next meeting. And, but I learned a valuable lesson with another congressman previously. I'm like, Senator Kelly, here it is. And as he walked out of that room, Kelly's senior legislative director said, okay, I'll put that in the file. And Kelly says, no, I'm holding on to this.

• 46:04Matt Farah?

  Good.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  That's when I knew.

• 46:05Matt Farah?

  Good.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  I'd connected. So Kelly, Steve Cohen's another one. Steve just got, he was, he's not been re-elected, but Tim Burchett's a good one. It just, it varies. John Rose was very interesting. We're out on the road, and he's running for governor. He didn't win, but he's, he's congressman. And he has another event. I always try to respect their time. They gave me 30 minutes. We get to the end, and his legis, or his aide, campaign aide, was like, we gotta get to the next event. And he's like, I find this interesting.

• 46:44Matt Farah?

  That's good.

• 46:45Speaker 01

  And he spends another 12 minutes, and his, his campaign aide is, like, sweating.

• 46:49Matt Farah?

  Sure.

• 46:50Speaker 01

  It's like, we gotta get to, but he actually wanted to know, I brought one of the big manufacturers down to explain some of the literal nuts and bolts. He's like, Don, tell me how this works. So there's another great example, where he could have left, he should have left, he should have left, but he stayed another 12 minutes because he just wanted to know. It was, at that point, it transitioned to what we are here, three guys talking about guardrails.

• 47:14Matt Farah?

  What is the safest design out there that exists to prevent spearing? And like, is there a, is there, I mean, you know, you hit anything in a car, there's gonna be some risk, but outside of a safer barrier on a racetrack, which are very, very expensive and impractical to use for a variety of reasons on the road, but what is the best solution that we have?

• 47:39Speaker 01

  Hazard mitigation. Is, you know, remove the hazard. A lot of times, we'll shield a tree. We'll take the tree down, and now, the safest thing is an open field. And a lot of times, remove, first thing you're gonna do is remove the hazard. One of the interesting things coming out is the next-generation terminal, the guardrail industry, they could use a branding, a brander, NGT, SKT, they, all, everything is an acronym.

• 48:13Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  They're engineers.

• 48:14Matt Farah?

  It's B to B shit. No one, no one needs to, no one needs a cool name for any of this stuff.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  The next-gen terminal.

• 48:19Matt Farah?

  Lightning rail, like, no one cares.

• 48:21Speaker 01

  The Soft Stop is one of the most brilliant, it's not my favorite.

• 48:27Matt Farah?

  Soft Stop is good. I like Soft Stop. That works.

• 48:29Speaker 01

  I don't like necessarily how it works, because it punctured gas, two gas tanks during the crash testing. But from a branding perspective.

• 48:36Matt Farah?

  Great name.

• 48:37Speaker 01

  But the next-generation terminal.

• 48:39Matt Farah?

  It could be Hot Stop.

• 48:41Speaker 01

  So, next-gen.

• 48:44Matt Farah?

  Fuel Stop.

• 48:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:46Matt Farah?

  Okay, sorry.

• 48:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, we don't spear gas tanks.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  That product is non-getting. So there's three things that a guard rail is supposed to do. When you hit it head-on, it's going to absorb kinetic energy.

• 49:00Matt Farah?

  Right.

• 49:01Speaker 01

  The second thing is, is when you hit it at about post number three, it's going to be, it's going to be held in tension and redirect you back out onto the road. It's going to work. And then when hit at an angle, at 15 degrees, most systems let you pass behind the guard rail into what should be a clear zone, but effectively, we don't put clear zones there.

• 49:25Matt Farah?

  Wait, you hit a guard rail at an angle?

• 49:27Speaker 01

  At a 15-degree angle.

• 49:28Matt Farah?

  You're saying you should go through it?

• 49:30Speaker 01

  You're going to pass through it. Well, there was a kid just recently in a crash up here on the 101, 70 miles from here. Dad reached out to me. He was, he lost his life because he passed behind the guard rail into the rocks and onto the beach.

• 49:47Matt Farah?

  So the guard rail just literally didn't do what it was supposed to do?

• 49:50Speaker 01

  No, that what they, it's a defined failure. It's a failure that they said, they called a pass. So one of the things Dr. Sickin did-

• 49:56Matt Farah?

  I'll show you the roller one.

• 49:58Speaker 01

  Okay. But with the next gen, what they did was, so yeah, see, these are some pretty-

• 50:05Matt Farah?

  Here's the roller ones. Oh, yeah. That's, I mean, that, that's probably your 15 degrees.

• 50:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, that's probably 25.

• 50:12Matt Farah?

  Okay, well, the better. I mean, it's the, it's still a big hit, but it does not go through it.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  I don't like how it boomerangs you back into traffic.

• 50:21Matt Farah?

  Whoever's in lane number three there may have a- So the roller one we're watching, it keeps you on the road. Are you saying that the current design lets you go through?

• 50:29Speaker 01

  If you hit it, this is just guard rail face. If you hit the end, the current ends, and that's got a really significant amount of rolling, but that's a higher level test, test, oh, that's MASH test level three.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  The, what happens with the next generation terminal is that it captures you.

• 50:51Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 50:52Speaker 01

  It's wild. Dean, Dean-

• 50:55Matt Farah?

  So is it like an accordion that compresses?

• 50:58Speaker 01

  It's a tethered system that compresses the rail and just, it moves down the rail, but it doesn't allow you to pass behind. He hit it at 77 and a half miles an hour at about a five-degree angle, and it redirects the vehicle and captures it and keeps it from going into the hazard. So I bet I have 200 to 300 examples.

• 51:18Matt Farah?

  Okay, so that is better.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  That is much better.

• 51:20Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  A 77 and a half-

• 51:22Matt Farah?

  What's that one called? Sorry?

• 51:23Speaker 01

  Next Generation Terminal?

• 51:24Matt Farah?

  Next Generation, oh, that's the NGT. Okay.

• 51:27Speaker 01

  But this is the guy that invented modern guard rail. He invented Safer Barrier. He was invited to the White House and given the National Innovators Medal by President George Bush. I mean, he was recognized by the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

• 51:42Matt Farah?

  Okay, so that is better. Okay. Is it very expensive? Is that why we're not-

• 51:47Speaker 01

  It's a little bit more expensive.

• 51:48Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 51:49Speaker 01

  And, but what we, the issue is, is that once you're on the approved products list, you know, if, if I was going to sell you, if I told you hot dogs and prime rib are the same price, you're going to take the prime rib.

• 52:03Matt Farah?

  Sure.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  The issue is, if I say hot dogs and prime rib are equal, and you're going to sell it to the general public, and you can buy hot dogs for hot dog prices and prime rib, but prime rib prices, guess what you're getting?

• 52:15Matt Farah?

  Sure.

• 52:15Speaker 01

  You're getting hot dogs. And that's what we have, is we have a nation full of hot dog, uh, hot dog guard rails that are worthless. These slotted rail terminals don't absorb any kind of kinetic energy. They're very poor at redirecting you back out onto the roadway. A kid in Denver, outside of Denver, just recently was speared. And he was 16 years old, lost his life.

• 52:37Matt Farah?

  When you have, in California, where, where, where we drive, where we go test cars up on the mountain, you know, the guard rail keeps you from going off a cliff. I mean, you know, well, good point, intended to keep you from going off a cliff. And they have these sort of like box sections on the end of them.

• 53:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 53:01Matt Farah?

  Is that, where, where do those fall in terms of the hierarchy of terrible guard rail design?

• 53:08Speaker 01

  It just depends on which one. You know, I passed by a sequential kinking terminal that tends to perform real well under most scenarios. If it's a Trinity ET Plus, there's a very good chance that you're going to die.

• 53:24Matt Farah?

  Oh, okay.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  I mean, I have, the most recent spearing was a couple of weeks ago.

• 53:29Matt Farah?

  Are there any cars that are more resistant to spearing than others?

• 53:36Speaker 01

  A, so one of the most dangerous hits, and it's also unfortunately going to be your most common hit, is a five-degree impact with a sedan on the headlight.

• 53:47Matt Farah?

  The headlight is just an easy way right in, no metal.

• 53:51Speaker 01

  No, you're just barely touching it, but what it does is it bends, kinks the rail in such a way that it comes around and spears the car. I can almost, if somebody just-

• 54:01Matt Farah?

  It like hooks the railing, kind of.

• 54:03Speaker 01

  Kind of. And so sedans at a low, because you're, you're just barely going off the road. You're just barely, but you got too far. And you catch it with that corner headlight. That corner hit is really, really bad. If I was going to put my kid in a car, though, I would be looking at like, well, Hannah was in a Volvo S80. I made the right choice.

• 54:27Matt Farah?

  Volvo S80 is a very safe car.

• 54:29Speaker 01

  I would be picking a Volvo S80. I'd be picking a Honda Accord, Toyota Camry.

• 54:37Speaker 01

  Just, I wouldn't be putting my kid, Dominic Ponder, his mom reached out to me. He was quarterback at Colorado. It was just, he was in a Tesla. I'm not putting my kid in a Tesla. That, that amount of torque, just, they can't handle it.

• 54:52Matt Farah?

  I wouldn't put a kid in a Tesla. They're too fast.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  They're too fast. He was doing 105. It didn't feel like 105. He hit a guard rail and lost his life. I'm not putting him in a pickup truck. I worked EMS, and I always thought, well, put him in a pickup truck, but the problem is kids don't do well in pickup trucks. And I'm not putting them in like a Mitsubishi Mirage or a small vehicle. You're just, you're looking at very bad performance. So just simple family sedans for a kid.

• 55:23Matt Farah?

  Yeah. What can individuals do? I mean, they can call their representatives. They can, I mean, what, is there, is there like, do you have like a field guide so that one, someone who watches your videos could go out and look at the rails in their town or on their street and go, oh, my God, these are bad?

• 55:43Speaker 01

  As my platform has grown, that is a need that's clear. And it's not just for most of the guys that are actually inspecting guard rails, the men and women that work for the state DOTs. They don't know what they're looking at. So this is something I'm working on, trying to develop, is that basic level training. But what I tell people, Hannah didn't die hitting 1,000 guard rails or 10,000 guard rails. She died hitting one. And if you see, it comes down to kinetic energy. Kinetic energy equals one-half the mass times the velocity squared.

• 56:22Speaker 01

  And one is control your velocity. Go out and have fun. I'm not saying, you know, we don't, you don't have these cars to add days to your life, but add life to your days. But, so control your speed in the, in the right context. But, Matt, I just lost my train of thought.

• 56:45Matt Farah?

  Okay. I mean, no, like, what, what, what, what is, what is the takeaway? And-

• 56:49Speaker 01

  So if you see, if you save one life, you save the world.

• 56:53Matt Farah?

  Oh, yeah.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  So Hannah hit one guard rail. If you see, going back to that one-half mass times the velocity squared, you see a damaged guard rail on the interstate, go where, go where the highest speeds are, find one guard rail, go to the state DOT and say, I want you to fix it.

• 57:15Speaker 01

  And get it fixed. And you, that may be all you ever do, but you may save one person's entire world.

• 57:21Matt Farah?

  So just literally, if you see a damaged guard rail, phone it in?

• 57:26Speaker 01

  Just phone it in.

• 57:28Matt Farah?

  That's pretty easy.

• 57:29Speaker 01

  It's super easy. And-

• 57:31Matt Farah?

  Is it very easy to get in touch with, with a state's DOT? Can you just like Google the phone number and get it?

• 57:36Speaker 01

  Usually there's an app and you can report it. And I mean, like, and so for, I have a kid in Pennsylvania, Mason, the guard rail kid.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  He, he's on the spectrum, but he's obsessed with guard rails and has gotten millions of dollars worth of guard rails.

• 57:52Matt Farah?

  Use your spectrum-ness for a superpower, kid. Go ahead.

• 57:56Speaker 01

  So I did a story with him on CBS in Philly that got picked up by national, but he has found his voice. And so like, you could be a Mason and report hundreds, or Richie in Connecticut who reports hundreds, or just report one.

• 58:12Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Does the DOT have an obligation that once someone reports a guard rail, they have to fix it? Is that-

• 58:17Speaker 01

  I put them on legal notice, especially, oh, yeah, like in a state, like California or Arizona, where they don't have sovereign immunity, or Pennsylvania, where a guy gets speared, Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturns sovereign immunity, which means you can't sue the king. We had this whole revolution years ago, but we still allowed, we liked this whole sovereign immunity, qualified immunity. We love those.

• 58:41Matt Farah?

  It's not that we don't want a king, it's that we just don't want to call it that.

• 58:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. So in a state like Pennsylvania, you put them on the clock, their liability goes through the roof.

• 58:52Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 58:52Speaker 01

  And guess what happens? It gets fixed. And so that, that's a lot of it, is just putting them on legal notice, get it fixed. If you don't, one of the things I do is I put all kinds of keywords so that my email, putting them on notice, is found in every, like, every single press request, every single FOIA, every single deposition request.

• 59:16Matt Farah?

  The most searchable email ever, super SEO-friendly complaint.

• 59:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I'll even write to, I'm like, if you get this in a deposition, here is my phone number. This is the day they knew. Make sure that you hold them accountable.

• 59:31Matt Farah?

  Yeah. I am not in the Epstein files, by the way. No. You got to be searchable, SEO.

• 59:37Speaker 01

  So I, I like to-

• 59:41Speaker 01

  I owe my fidelity to the next victim, not to making the DOT happy. I want to work with them.

• 59:46Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 59:47Speaker 01

  But they may be the, I told this to Carlos. I said, listen, I have my dude, Carlos Verser, that head of UDOT. I owe my fidelity to you as a father of children to make sure that I push you as far as I can professionally. Because I do not want to get the call that I have gotten, that I got this morning from another family in Utah. I don't want that coming from you.

• 1:00:12Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it sucks that it just, it, it seems like common sense that this stuff should be installed properly. Inspected regularly.

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  Tested.

• 1:00:26Matt Farah?

  Tested, you, materials that are used for, that are appropriate for the climate and the conditions that don't rust.

• 1:00:35Speaker 01

  You would think so.

• 1:00:37Matt Farah?

  Yeah, and, and, and when, when, I think a lot of times, I mean, a lot of times when there is a crash and someone crashes into the guardrail and damages the guardrail. You know, the, you don't really stop and think of like, well, what role did the guard, guardrail actually have here in preventing this from getting as bad as it got, right?

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  Yes, my friend Stuart Payne, he lost his daughter in Florida. He lives in San Diego. We were just inspecting guardrails on the Pacific Coast Highway that were, they're still incinerated. When was the fire?

• 1:01:11Matt Farah?

  Oh, January of 2025.

• 1:01:13Speaker 01

  And there's, they, all the posts are gone.

• 1:01:16Matt Farah?

  Yeah, there's a bunch.

• 1:01:18Speaker 01

  But anyway, Stuart is pushing some stuff in California because when we looked at Jada's crash at I-75 South at exit 261 going to I-4, you're going to Disney World in Florida. You read the report, there's no, there's no signs of a guardrail having gone through her car. And it was like an IED went off. And so Stuart is pushing for some legislative changes here in California that would have to, you'd have to document what actually happened. Just call balls and strikes.

• 1:01:51Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah. Why was that, why would that, was that not documented at all? Because it's just not something the person thought about or because it's, I mean, I don't know.

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  Well, having been trained.

• 1:02:02Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:03Speaker 01

  As an EMT.

• 1:02:04Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  A lot of our training now on this side of it, I see has been influenced by big organizations like Chamber of Commerce to be ambiguous.

• 1:02:12Matt Farah?

  Oh.

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  They don't want you saying there was a guardrail in the car. They taught you to be more ambiguous, but just call balls and strikes. You don't have to determine whether it worked or not, but saying the guardrail came into the car and cut the person's head off.

• 1:02:27Matt Farah?

  Yeah, that seems significant.

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  It's a significant finding, but there are several cases where you, you don't have definitive proof.

• 1:02:37Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  Because the person, the EMT or the police officer didn't write, the guardrail was impaled in the car. It seems like a pretty significant.

• 1:02:46Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:46Speaker 01

  Element to the crash.

• 1:02:48Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I agree. I think that, that should be.

• 1:02:51Speaker 01

  So providing better instructions to the, um, the police and the investigators. To just call balls and strikes. You don't have to say it worked right. You don't have to know all this stuff. Just document what is in front of your eyes.

• 1:03:08Matt Farah?

  Was part of the infrastructure inside the vehicle, yes or no?

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  After my New Yorker story came out, a young man from Venezuela, he crashed in Florida. I read the crash report and it says, was infrastructure involved in the outcomes of the crash? And they said, no. He got speared by a guardrail. It absolutely was.

• 1:03:30Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:32Speaker 01

  And it's just stunning to read these crash.

• 1:03:34Matt Farah?

  Venezuela?

• 1:03:35Speaker 01

  This, the crash was in Florida. He was here.

• 1:03:37Matt Farah?

  Oh, oh, oh.

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  He had lost his father, trying to provide for his family.

• 1:03:41Matt Farah?

  Oh, okay, got it.

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  And loses his life on America's, um, roadways.

• 1:03:46Matt Farah?

  Or when you, like, what about the, the sort of height of today's cars versus, you know, when many of these guardrails were designed and some of them were installed and it was mostly sedans on the road and now it's mostly SUVs? Do we have to readjust for that as well as the weight of the electric cars as well?

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So the old standard was about 27 and 5/8 inch. And something called the Midwest Guardrail Standard. I asked Dr. Sicking, who, again, you're familiar with the Safer Barrier. I said, Dean, what's your most significant contribution? What is your magnum opus? What did you invent? That is the most important invention, if it was implemented. And he said, the MGS. So the MGS is three things. It raised the height of the guardrail to 31 inches high to the top. It, the splices, guardrail has 12 and a half or 25 foot panels and they're connected by eight bolts. It moved it three feet

• 1:04:52Speaker 01

  to the one side. So now every bolt releases through just one panel versus having to, every fourth one released through two panels. And he said, and then it uses what's called a blockout, 12, 12 inch blockout that keeps the rail offset from the post and prevents the vehicle from snagging on the post.

• 1:05:12Matt Farah?

  Oh, okay, yeah.

• 1:05:13Speaker 01

  He said, if we implemented that, fully implemented, he said, I think we'd save 200 to 300 lives a year. He said, that's the most important thing I have ever invented with the most significant element being moving that splice three inches and raising the height to 31. And there are.

• 1:05:30Matt Farah?

  Should it be raised higher now, do you think?

• 1:05:32Speaker 01

  There's, I, and Nebraska's done some research that says raise it higher.

• 1:05:39Speaker 01

  We have maximized what we're going to get out of W-Bing guardrail. We need to be looking at, um, you know, this would be like trying, at this point, we're trying to,

• 1:05:52Speaker 01

  you would laugh at somebody who said, hey, we're going to try to get the most that we can out of a film camera. We've moved to digital and we need to be willing to move past W-Bing guardrail. It is going to max out at about 5,000 pounds. We need to be looking at different types of structures, different types of materials, but also the AV technology does have the potential, if implemented properly, to revolutionize, keep the vehicle on the road.

• 1:06:24Matt Farah?

  I mean, ADAS certainly does. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:27Speaker 01

  So I'm gonna, I am so excited to try a Waymo, I don't know.

• 1:06:33Matt Farah?

  Oh, yeah, you should. They're fun.

• 1:06:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, it looks like a blast.

• 1:06:37Matt Farah?

  They're fun. We take Waymos all the time.

• 1:06:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I have, well, I have nowhere to go with it, but I'm gonna go there with it.

• 1:06:43Matt Farah?

  Did you, I didn't see, did you drive here or did you take a car, a taxi?

• 1:06:47Speaker 01

  I took an Uber and then I was walking around.

• 1:06:49Matt Farah?

  Wherever you are going next, I am sending you there in a Waymo.

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:06:53Matt Farah?

  My treat. Yeah.

• 1:06:54Speaker 01

  All right.

• 1:06:55Matt Farah?

  They're really interesting. We, we ride them a lot. I mean, in, in our experience, personal experience, they, they are pretty, pretty good at the task of driving, but they also reveal certain things about where, you know, a human or, you know, a computer that you can talk to a little bit. For instance, we would, if you take them, you know, it, it might drop you in a, like a huge puddle. And you can't be like, hey, man, pull up three feet.

• 1:07:26Speaker 01

  And you're, you have to step out in the puddle.

• 1:07:29Matt Farah?

  You can't, you can't, you can't go, hey, no, that, like, you know, when you're pulling up somewhere in a taxi or an Uber, the entrance is around back. Okay. And you know what I mean? Or whatever. This, they just drops you where it drops you. You can't be all last minute, oh, no, not here, over here. Like, so there are some interesting limitations to it. Um, but, um, as far as the mechanics of a car going down the road, I've only seen them do things and, and the, you know, the, um, like where they sleep, the big parking lot is right here.

• 1:08:02Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:08:02Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah. So we're like, we're, we're at ground zero for Waymos. They're all over here.

• 1:08:07Speaker 01

  Oh, it was a blast watching them yesterday.

• 1:08:09Matt Farah?

  If you go to the lot at like 8:01 AM tomorrow morning, they'll wake up and it'll be like ants marching. They all, all leave the lot and go to work.

• 1:08:18Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 1:08:18Matt Farah?

  It's, it's really kind of funky, actually. Um, but I've only seen them do things that were dangerous, uh, twice. And once was yesterday, actually. Uh, I saw one go a wrong way down a one-way street yesterday.

• 1:08:31Speaker 01

  I saw one yesterday that was parked over the crosswalk. I, I, I, as I pointed it out, my friend who was driving.

• 1:08:39Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:40Speaker 01

  Uh, was sitting over a crosswalk. So I'm like, I guess it's a wash here.

• 1:08:45Matt Farah?

  LA is a little flexible with some of that shit. We have the California roll, you know?

• 1:08:49Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:08:49Matt Farah?

  Yeah, you can do that here.

• 1:08:51Speaker 01

  But, um, the, well, the other thing was, is the crosswalk was almost not visible because it was, but the other, like, when it comes to barriers, one of the things, just recently in Utah, I was pointing out to the head of UDOT was you have these old obsolete, NCHRP report 350 era guardrails that were tested under the 93 standard shielding a reservoir. Like, we got to be smarter here. We need to be using a concrete barrier, a higher test level barrier that, um,

• 1:09:24Matt Farah?

  Cause you're keeping cars out of going into water.

• 1:09:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:27Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:09:27Speaker 01

  Are, are we protecting, is our asset, is our hazard also an asset? In the state of Utah, if you were to lose a reservoir, you're going to, you could potentially destroy the economy of the state.

• 1:09:40Matt Farah?

  Right, yeah. If a car goes into a reservoir, that water then becomes.

• 1:09:45Speaker 01

  Contaminated.

• 1:09:46Matt Farah?

  Contaminated.

• 1:09:46Speaker 01

  And you're, and you're protecting it with a barrier that is only rated to 62 and a half miles an hour? You, this is something that's an asset. Use something different.

• 1:09:55Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  Looking at, we need to be looking at motorcyclists.

• 1:10:00Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I did want to circle back.

• 1:10:01Speaker 01

  That bothers me. Go ahead.

• 1:10:03Matt Farah?

  Well, no, because we, we glossed over it earlier because I, I ride motorcycles. And what kind of barrier could you hit as a motorcyclist and have it, what, what could improve outcomes for motorcyclists?

• 1:10:20Speaker 01

  Well, so one of the things I was able to do, well, I wanted to study guardrails. I partnered with Midwest Safety, their big YouTube channel. And they have an organization called Safety Vet. We figured out how to basically archive, they did. All I did was get on their website. But, so we started archiving state DOT traffic camera feeds.

• 1:10:40Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  Basically screen record 1,000 feeds at once and then use AI to claw back before the incident. And so I saw a lot of motorcycle crashes happen. Concrete barriers, anything that has a post and beam cable barrier, W beam guardrail, thrive beam guardrail is very bad for motorcyclists. It's not the cables, it's not the guardrail that's hurting these ones. It's the posts.

• 1:11:07Matt Farah?

  Yeah, they're vertical I beams. If you hit one, it's gonna slice you like crazy.

• 1:11:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:13Matt Farah?

  And I guess the concrete K rail is just smoother.

• 1:11:16Speaker 01

  It's smoother.

• 1:11:17Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:17Speaker 01

  So if we have a location that has a lot of crashes, economically, it makes sense to replace that with a Jersey barrier K rail, something that doesn't have that post and beam interaction. And then signs and lines, doing stuff like painting these W beam guardrails. But what I found when I started archiving, I went into this thinking that motorcyclists are idiots that caused their own deaths. And I flipped. Probably sixty-five to seventy percent of these crashes that I was watching were being caused by somebody who was not

• 1:11:58Speaker 01

  paying attention, watching a motorcyclist get run over by a pedestrian. I have one, you mentioned Maryville, Tennessee. He was on the El Cola Highway. And she pulled out left in front of him.

• 1:12:15Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:16Speaker 01

  So one of the coolest things I was able to do was pull the upstream cameras because they were saying, well, he's lane splitting, he was speeding, he was...

• 1:12:22Matt Farah?

  And he wasn't.

• 1:12:23Speaker 01

  No, I was able to prove, I did the math, he was doing fifty-two miles an hour, stayed in that left lane, never left the lane, and she turned left in front of him and killed him. So with, a lot of the issues are, at least for me, a lot of the issues with motorcycles, motorcycle crashes are being, they're secondary crashes caused by a car, or truck, or large tractor trailer. And then the other ones, I've seen a lot of, oh, good grief, testosterone and being twenty. I mean, when you have somebody who's doing a hundred and forty-five...

• 1:13:02Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:03Speaker 01

  And goes head on into a guardrail, you're not gonna survive.

• 1:13:05Matt Farah?

  No, yeah, that's...

• 1:13:06Speaker 01

  So...

• 1:13:07Matt Farah?

  Yes, making bad decisions.

• 1:13:09Speaker 01

  Making bad decisions. Life's hard when you're in a fast car, when you're in a fast motorcycle. Those decisions get compounded really fast.

• 1:13:17Matt Farah?

  My little cousin was killed on a motorcycle. His own fault. I hate to say it. He made bad decisions, and the crash was his fault, but it's still the...

• 1:13:27Speaker 01

  It's worth trying to save him, though.

• 1:13:28Matt Farah?

  Oh, no, like, yeah, no, like, you know, this particular one was bad decisions, unfortunately.

• 1:13:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, unfortunately, but I always, I always, I prefer like, yeah, you made some horrible decisions. You were speeding, you were, you were smoking weed, you were doing whatever. I'm like, okay, then we're gonna have you arrested, but we're not gonna try to summarily execute you with a guardrail.

• 1:13:54Matt Farah?

  No, for sure, for sure.

• 1:13:55Speaker 01

  And so that's one of the things that, I think changing our culture at state DOT is saying, I mean...

• 1:14:02Matt Farah?

  Well, it just, you know, again, it seems like common sense. It seems like it's not political. It seems like observable reality that would improve outcomes, you know, and it's, it's, we doesn't require inventing some new technology.

• 1:14:20Speaker 01

  A lot of it doesn't.

• 1:14:21Matt Farah?

  Yeah, none, yeah, very little of it does.

• 1:14:24Speaker 01

  One of the frustrating things for me is, I wish this was a red problem or a blue problem. I haven't gone anywhere. You drop me anywhere, and I bet you I could, you tell me, find a hundred guardrails, and you get to go home.

• 1:14:37Matt Farah?

  Shitty infrastructure is an American, is an American tradition, my friend.

• 1:14:41Speaker 01

  Unfortunately, it's not just American. It's pretty much everywhere, but it's been, it's been stunning to see just the, how bad it is.

• 1:14:50Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:51Speaker 01

  And discouraging, but also, you know, we've been able to bend the curve and save an awful lot of lives. There's a lot that, more that we could.

• 1:15:02Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:03Speaker 01

  But it's, it's, it's difficult to, I mean, I have to face my worst day every single day.

• 1:15:13Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:14Speaker 01

  I don't know when, you know, I pick up, I get a call, I don't recognize the area code, I pick it up, and it's, it's Steve Eimers. I'm like, oh, gosh, I know I've paid all my bills, so this isn't a creditor. It's somebody who's usually saying, and I've gotten this probably a dozen times, this exact, my was cut in half. My daughter was decapitated. And there were no guardrail bolts there. You know, the one I'm gonna go up and look, or the one I've been looking up on the one-on-one, doesn't look like it was even bolted together. And we have an eighteen-year-old kid dead.

• 1:15:53Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:54Speaker 01

  They encased it in concrete.

• 1:15:55Matt Farah?

  Oh, really?

• 1:15:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. And these little things matter. And it's just, I don't care what the kid was doing. I don't care what happened before that. You do your job, right?

• 1:16:07Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah. No, that's negligent.

• 1:16:09Speaker 01

  And a lot of time, a lot of times people say, well, what does it matter? And so probably the story I like to, I left this with Carlos, I left it with, I try to leave it with every state DOT. If what you do today, you don't think your job matters. If what you do today would one day be called on to save the President of the United States, would there be a big investigation after the crash? Or would they just, would you not know about it? Because this has happened. Twenty nineteen, rural Opelika, Alabama. There is a vehicle headed south, black SUV, they're rubbernecking, they're quite interested in the northbound vehicle,

• 1:16:50Speaker 01

  and he drives like a moth right into the median of Interstate seven, or sixty-five. Vehicle headed north was the President of the United States. And the cable barriers, cable barrier guardrail captures that car and redirects it away. You're talking about the President headed north, probably about eighty miles an hour, vehicle headed south, seventy to eighty miles an hour, a hundred and fifty miles an hour of kinetic energy?

• 1:17:18Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:19Speaker 01

  If, it's not a hypothetical, it happened, it redirected the vehicle away from the President, and I have the video of it.

• 1:17:29Matt Farah?

  But that was the, is it those, like, literally, like, it looks like steel lift Caleb?

• 1:17:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:35Matt Farah?

  Cables, and they go through, like, the wood posts?

• 1:17:36Speaker 01

  They go through steel posts.

• 1:17:37Matt Farah?

  Oh, they do, okay.

• 1:17:38Speaker 01

  And, but it redirected the vehicle away from the President. And I tell every single DOT worker, I guarantee the kid that was tensioning this cable did not realize that one day his installation would be called on to basically protect the President. But it did. And you need to, every single install, you should, you should maintain that level of fidelity. Is this gonna be called on to save my kid? Is it gonna be called on to save the President? Because it has happened.

• 1:18:10Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:11Speaker 01

  And so enter it with that level of seriousness and sobriety.

• 1:18:14Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:15Speaker 01

  It's not just, you're not just beating it to fit and painting it to match.

• 1:18:19Matt Farah?

  I mean, I bet most of the time they are, but they shouldn't be.

• 1:18:23Speaker 01

  Unfortunately, most of the time, it's just churn it and burn it, let's get on to the next job. We have a lot of, of the guardrail companies now that are being scooped up by private equity.

• 1:18:32Matt Farah?

  Hmm. Quality goes up when that happens, right?

• 1:18:35Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:18:36Matt Farah?

  Price goes down, quality goes up.

• 1:18:37Speaker 01

  And, yeah.

• 1:18:39Matt Farah?

  We gotta go to the people. Do we have anything fun from them over at Patreon.com slash The Smoke Tire Podcast? It's where you get the show live, it's where you ask us questions, it's where you watch the show live, as, excuse me, it's where you got the show ahead of time, and where you can get it without ads, exclusive access to merch, collabs, and things, and you even get extra show every month. And let's see some of them. Jeep of Theseus says, I've always wondered if the innovations in safety on racetracks that could be applied to the roadways, we've already talked about the safer barrier and the person in charge of that being the same person who's innovating in the roadways. Are

• 1:19:20Matt Farah?

  there instances where you could use gravel traps to slow down cars, or use actual safer barriers and corner the higher rates of crashes?

• 1:19:27Speaker 01

  It's gonna be cost.

• 1:19:29Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:30Speaker 01

  It's gonna come down to cost, plus then, some of the concerns are the areas with the highest number of crashes are also, you're talking about then having to put workers into the middle of, say, I four oh five.

• 1:19:44Matt Farah?

  To actually install the barriers, sure. Honda Brolapse EV, what about driver's ed? Do high schools still have driver's ed required? It wasn't offered when I got my license in the nineties. I had it at my high school.

• 1:20:01Speaker 01

  I had it.

• 1:20:02Matt Farah?

  I believe it was mandatory, actually.

• 1:20:05Speaker 01

  It should be.

• 1:20:06Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:09Speaker 01

  I see a lot of very young drivers. They don't understand kinetic energy. They don't understand the significance of a seatbelt.

• 1:20:22Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:22Speaker 01

  Sorry about that. But I've seen so many crashes that if a teen driver just had their seatbelt on, they'd be alive.

• 1:20:32Matt Farah?

  I lost a friend in college not wearing a seatbelt on the FDR Drive in New York City, fully ejected. And actually, and this person, this person was a committed non-seatbelt wearer, actually, for a very dumb reason. Because their father, because he wasn't wearing the seatbelt, in a freak way, was ejected and was okay, whereas the car exploded. And he was like, because of that one thing, how it went down, committed non-seatbelt.

• 1:21:08Speaker 01

  And the kid died. The crash that I just saw in Utah. That kid was unbelted. It's the only reason he was alive, because he got lifted up and the guardrail went between his legs.

• 1:21:19Matt Farah?

  Wow, that's, I mean, that's crazy luck.

• 1:21:21Speaker 01

  And I can see the dent in the windshield. And it's the only reason he's alive. That being said.

• 1:21:27Matt Farah?

  The math was against that happening.

• 1:21:29Speaker 01

  I have a case in Florida, center median, W being guardrail, two pickups, four people in each pickup, same exact brand. They both, they hit each other, they hit the guardrail, both flip over. Four that are dead right there, four that are walking home uninjured, essentially. They'll go to the ER, get a Band-Aid, and go on their way. The only difference between the two vehicles, with four dead, four walkie-talkies, was seatbelts. And so...

• 1:22:02Matt Farah?

  Crazy. Quadrofolioface, is there a safety argument for no guardrails in certain circumstances? Does fear control speeds when there's exposure?

• 1:22:15Speaker 01

  Yes, there was a viral video about a lady in Lake Tahoe. There was no guardrails. It looked like about a thousand-foot drop. And I went and pulled the NHTSA data, 15 years of data. In the area with no guardrails, there were zero fatalities. With the pucker factor, if you're driving, you're terrified, then you, it changes, if there's a guardrail there, you think it's safe. We talked about the tail of the dragon earlier. That's an area where I think you have to look at and say, who's my user on this?

• 1:22:52Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:53Speaker 01

  I'm pulling that off, because I know that, like, I live just less than an hour away from the dragon. I know that we end up with a major motorcycle crash every single week of the summer.

• 1:23:05Matt Farah?

  For sure.

• 1:23:06Speaker 01

  I will save more lives not having a guardrail there than having one because of the risk to the actual road user.

• 1:23:13Matt Farah?

  Yeah, you see a lot of people in, I mean, people do hit trees, but you see motorcycles and cars in those crash compilation videos, where a lot of times, they just sort of like, put it in the ditch a little bit. And it's, it's not pretty, but it's usually not a horrible mess.

• 1:23:30Speaker 01

  So as you step in the big cottonwood, and there, you drive very careful, and you are very cognizant of the fact that, if I go off the road here, I am probably going to die.

• 1:23:44Matt Farah?

  There's a, in terms of, I read about urbanism and stuff like that, and how, how you can actually improve safety outcomes. And there's a lot of places throughout Europe that use a variety of natural and sort of subliminal ways to control speed that aren't just signage and, you know, where it could be a change in the surface texture of the road, it could be narrowed lanes, it could be a tree canopy, it could be a variety of different things. Exposure and fear of death is a good one.

• 1:24:22Speaker 01

  I've seen, if you look at a roadway design, the design speed limit versus the posted speed limit. People will drive as fast as they're comfortable for. If you design a road, multiple roads in the state of Florida, design speed was 75, posted speed was 40. The average speed is about 65, because they, I mean, they're going, they're comfortable. It's comfortable. Make it uncomfortable to drive that fast, and people won't drive

• 1:24:49Matt Farah?

  I completely agree. I, I absolutely ignore what the sign says on the road 100% of the time. And I just go, I'm gonna go the speed that feels appropriate for this circumstance. Usually, it's okay. I don't drive like a fucking maniac. I normally drive like a regular human being. You wouldn't, you wouldn't know by watching me drive that that's what I'm doing. It's what everyone does.

• 1:25:12Speaker 01

  Everyone does that. And so, a road should be as, make it as scary as it is dangerous, is how I would put it. I have a lot of locations where we have bridges protected with just a blunt end guardrail. That is extremely dangerous. A little boy, a Cameron up, six years old, speared by the guardrail and killed. And it would have been better with no guardrail there, and it would have been a lot scarier. You slow down.

• 1:25:46Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Oncea Tech, now a teacher, says, I once witnessed a drunk driver hit a telephone pole with a 2000 Chevy Traverse at 35 miles an hour. The telephone pole snapped at the base like a toothpick. They were alone, the vehicle high-centered on the chunk of the pole. Nobody was hurt. Is anything done to wood telephone poles to make them break easily, or was this person just very lucky?

• 1:26:16Speaker 01

  What's the quote? God protects the drunk, the fool, in the United States of America.

• 1:26:24Speaker 01

  I think that's an example of God protecting the fool.

• 1:26:28Matt Farah?

  Yeah. And also the drunk.

• 1:26:30Speaker 01

  And the drunk.

• 1:26:30Matt Farah?

  Yeah, same time. Okay, Flock2us says, would longer exit guardrails pose safety issues on highways? Are those plastic pylons effective?

• 1:26:46Speaker 01

  The plastic pylons can be effective. This is, I called the shot. I take no pleasure, and I've probably called the shot.

• 1:26:55Matt Farah?

  Bring your mic a little closer to your face. You can bring it to you if you don't want to go there.

• 1:26:58Speaker 01

  So I've, I had a crash where they needed to be extended. They didn't protect the hazard. And I reached out to Tennessee Transportation Leaders 11 days before the crash. And then two people from Florida were killed. And then they extended it 300 feet on the exit. But most of the time, I want to see guardrails removed. I want to see fewer guardrails. A lot of times, let's look at basic Newtonian physics. An object in motion tends to stay in motion. Where's that vehicle gonna go? It's an inside curve, do we need the guardrail there? Maybe if it's a, you know, you don't want to ping pong from the one over to the

• 1:27:39Speaker 01

  other and end up in a retention pond. But the more guardrail, one of the safest things to do is remove guardrail, especially for motorcyclists. You remove the guardrail. I have an example in Florida. It actually prompted my Florida investigation that led to the whole state being audited by FDOT, and even Mickey Mouse ended up exploring all the guardrails in Disney World being changed out. And you remove guardrails when you can. And that was prompted by a crash, a motorcycle crash, where they, they had hazard, they

• 1:28:22Speaker 01

  removed the hazard, left the guardrail, and it killed a motorcyclist. It's disgusting.

• 1:28:26Matt Farah?

  Oh, there was a guardrail protecting nothing?

• 1:28:28Speaker 01

  Nothing.

• 1:28:29Matt Farah?

  Oh, that's, yeah, we should definitely not have that. That seems easy enough. 1,000 horsepower and still 90 minutes late. Are you aware of any road designs and layouts that we could be using? We sort of just talked about this, the different, different, yeah, we've covered that one.

• 1:28:47Speaker 01

  Roundabouts, I love roundabouts.

• 1:28:49Matt Farah?

  They just voted it down in Malibu. They were gonna put roundabouts in PCH through Malibu, and they, the locals fucking voted it down. I was so stoked. They're idiots.

• 1:28:59Speaker 01

  It allows traffic to flow, much smoother. If you're a liberal, you should like them. If you're a libertarian, you should like them. If you're conservative, you should like them. Lower costs, I mean.

• 1:29:14Matt Farah?

  If you want to drift your car, you should like them.

• 1:29:16Speaker 01

  Fewer pretextual stops.

• 1:29:17Matt Farah?

  Pass it.

• 1:29:19Speaker 01

  They simply work. It's math. You cut the conflicts point, conflict points way down. Let's get that.

• 1:29:25Matt Farah?

  YamahaBibi, what states have the worst and what states have the best guardrails?

• 1:29:31Speaker 01

  Nevada was horrific.

• 1:29:33Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 1:29:35Speaker 01

  I just, I had the story at Channel 8 with the, they have been awful for years. They do what they want. And it was very, very frustrating dealing with them. They said that I was, they probably, I didn't see the actual text, but it's probably "you're wrong", spelled Y-O-U-R.

• 1:29:55Matt Farah?

  Big state, not much rules.

• 1:29:57Speaker 01

  California is stunning. For how big their budget is, how horrific and outdated the guardrails here are.

• 1:30:06Matt Farah?

  Sounds right.

• 1:30:06Speaker 01

  Yep. It should embarrass the people of the state of California. New York is pretty bad.

• 1:30:13Matt Farah?

  Okay, who's good? I mean, relatively speaking?

• 1:30:18Speaker 01

  Relatively.

• 1:30:19Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah, relatively speaking.

• 1:30:22Speaker 01

  Utah is up there. Virginia is doing an okay job. And I'm talking like maybe giving all of them a D minus.

• 1:30:30Matt Farah?

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:30:31Speaker 01

  Or an F plus.

• 1:30:32Matt Farah?

  All right.

• 1:30:33Speaker 01

  Missouri has been very proactive. I'd say Missouri's done an awful lot.

• 1:30:41Speaker 01

  Every single one of them has a lot, maybe certain elements of Tennessee. They, it's very easy to predict. It's all cultural based. It's based on the leadership of each region.

• 1:30:55Matt Farah?

  Right.

• 1:30:55Speaker 01

  So it's very difficult to say.

• 1:30:57Matt Farah?

  Uh, going top down with the top down, what do you think of Australia's guardrails? Do you know anything about Australia's guardrails?

• 1:31:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, they use, there's, uh, the wine country, or the wine, what is it? Wine road, uh, bus crash involved installation errors. You had an entire wedding party, the bus was speared. I think 10 or 11, 12 killed. I see the same mistakes that I see in the United States. I was just watching, um, O'Neil, the seal, I don't know if you saw any of the viral videos, I said elephant seal that comes on. I was watching, I looked at the guardrails around Tasmania and they had installation errors. They had damaged guardrail. Uh, Australia is doing a better job, as is New Zealand, the NZTA.

• 1:31:49Speaker 01

  Austrods, they are much more deliberate in how they evaluate the equipment. If it's not needed, if it's not going to make the road better, they don't approve it.

• 1:31:59Matt Farah?

  New Zealand, we've driven before, I'm actually going back to New Zealand in January. If you send me the guide, I'll bring a set of calipers, I'll scope it out for you. But, uh, there's, they do their speed limiting system like a little different from us. Like their speed limit is higher usually than the speed that almost anybody would be able to drive on the road.

• 1:32:22Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:32:23Matt Farah?

  It, you know, like you just, it's actually makes it a little harder to plan road trips because it's how Google Maps interprets drive distances is based on speed limits as well. But, uh, yeah, it's, um, it's a little weird, but I will, if you send me the, if you give me a laminated sheet of what to look for, I will inspect the South Island of New Zealand for you.

• 1:32:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:44Matt Farah?

  Um, is that all the ones for Steve? All right, cool. Well, look, man, I, I really respect your mission. The guys from the Straight Pipes YouTube channel in Canada absolutely insisted that I email you and get you in here. And I started watching, uh, your content. I was like, all right, this, this is, this guy's, this guy's on the thing that I'm on. Because we, we really do not need to invent anything new, give up any more of our privacy, you know, than we already have. Have a Silicon Valley overlord in charge of getting, driving us around. You know, these are incredibly analog solutions to these problems.

• 1:33:27Speaker 01

  Nuts, simple nuts and bolts. I mean, putting eight bolts in a guardrail.

• 1:33:31Matt Farah?

  Signs and lines.

• 1:33:31Speaker 01

  Signs and lines.

• 1:33:33Matt Farah?

  And like.

• 1:33:34Speaker 01

  This side up stickers.

• 1:33:35Matt Farah?

  This side up stickers.

• 1:33:37Speaker 01

  Who goes to Congress and goes, has meetings with 10, say, what do you want? I want this side up stickers. I felt like a fool.

• 1:33:47Matt Farah?

  Can we stencil it? Just hold it, can we do that?

• 1:33:50Speaker 01

  We could.

• 1:33:50Matt Farah?

  But moving one hole would really permanently solve that problem.

• 1:33:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you have a hole you can't use, get rid of it. I mean, keep it simple, stupid.

• 1:34:01Matt Farah?

  Yeah, so you have an extra hole in this piece that you're not supposed to use. And if you do use it, it makes the piece much more dangerous.

• 1:34:10Speaker 01

  And we leave the hole. And then we say, then the guy hits it and he says, well, he was drunk. Well, you left a hole.

• 1:34:17Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:17Speaker 01

  Uh, you weren't drunk. What's wrong with you? Seriously, what's wrong with you? And, um, and I think the, we shouldn't turn bad days into dead days. We're not trying, these aren't stupid human tricks. We're not trying to cull the population and say, okay, let's see what happens with this. No.

• 1:34:40Matt Farah?

  Right, we're not trying to find a reason that this person deserved it.

• 1:34:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, they had it coming. That's horrible.

• 1:34:47Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:48Speaker 01

  Horrible mindset.

• 1:34:49Matt Farah?

  You still, I mean, yeah, you, yes, because a good decision in a car or a bad decision in the car or a, uh, distract, getting distracted momentarily in a car shouldn't be a death sentence.

• 1:35:01Speaker 01

  No, absolutely not.

• 1:35:03Matt Farah?

  Well, thank you for coming and sharing your story. I can't wait to send you in the way, in a Waymo somewhere and get a full report back.

• 1:35:10Speaker 01

  All right.

• 1:35:10Matt Farah?

  Um, you are the guardrail guy on YouTube. You are the guardrail guy on Instagram. Are you also on TikTok? I don't use TikTok.

• 1:35:18Speaker 01

  TikTok and X.

• 1:35:19Matt Farah?

  And, and, uh, we call it Twitter here, please. Um, and, uh, one, it will always and forever be Twitter in this house. Um, but, uh, it's great to meet you. Yuri will be very jealous that you are here. Um, and, uh, I hope, uh, I hope you, uh, are, enjoy the rest of your time in our state. Sunshine's free.

• 1:35:39Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:35:40Matt Farah?

  Um, and infrastructure is terrible.

• 1:35:43Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:35:44Matt Farah?

  Thanks very much.

• 1:35:45Speaker 01

  Thank you, Matt.

• 1:35:46Matt Farah?

  Steve Eimers, the guardrail guy. Thank you to our patrons for asking such good questions today. We appreciate you guys very much. Of course, patreon.com slash this moment tire podcast. If you want all those things that we said before and you get to support your favorite car podcast on top of it. Thanks very much, everybody. I will see you later.

• 1:36:04Speaker 01

  See ya.