Renewed call for guardrails following fatal Lehigh Acres canal crash

A car flying into a canal, killing a 47-year-old man, has many raising the question of how it can be stopped from happening again.

The latest crash happened late Monday night on Sunshine Boulevard N and 55th ST W in Lehigh Acres.

• RELATED: Driver killed following crash into canal in Lehigh Acres

This crash adds to the long list of lives taken the exact same way. Cars crashing into plots of water like canals, retention ponds and even lakes and rivers are stories WINK News covers often.

If you have lived in Florida long enough, you know these crashes are common. WINK News is now asking if there is something that could prevent these accidents.

You’ll notice that around canals and water spaces in Southwest Florida, you don’t typically see guardrails.

Neighbors living near canals, who spoke to WINK News Reporter Olivia Jean on Tuesday, said they agree with roadside safety advocate Stephen Eimers, also known as “the guardrail guy,” that guardrails are a good idea.

“The purpose of a guardrail is to save lives,” Eimers said.

Eimer’s daughter died almost eight years ago in a guardrail crash.

“She was driving in McMinn County, Tennessee, went off the left side of the road and hit a guardrail and it went through her car. It led me to ask a whole lot of questions. My goal is to rob America’s streets of future victims of traffic violence involving our barriers,” Eimers said.

Since the crash that took his daughter’s life, he has traveled across the country to study different crashes involving guardrails. He talked about, in some cases, the issue of guardrails not being designed according to their design drawings, leading to poor performance and safety risks.

“Too often, we’re not following the recipe, and we end up seeing some really bad outcomes. We’re seeing folks go into bridges, go into water. We’re seeing guardrails that don’t perform, maybe kink up and come into a vehicle and kill or maim somebody. We shouldn’t have a device, a safety device called guardrail that is not guarding; that’s killing,” Eimers said.

Eimers said the need for proper design and implementation of these guardrails are essential to ensure guardrails function as safety devices rather than causing harm. He said adding effective guardrails near Florida water could help.

“Florida has one of the worst problems in our nation, with people hitting a guardrail and going into the water, or not hitting a guardrail and going into unguarded waters. There’s water everywhere in the state of Florida, and it becomes a very difficult thing,” Eimers said.

Chloe Arenas died in 2015 after her car crashed into an Orange County pond. As a result, Chloe’s Law was passed in 2018. It requires guardrails to be installed where someone has drowned in a car crash. The problem is there is a limitation. It only applies to car crashes between 2006 to 2016. Other crashes outside of that time frame don’t get looked at.

“One of the first and probably most important things that can happen in the next legislative session in the state of Florida is for the legislature to renew Chloe’s Law and make it permanent so that every time somebody’s going into the water in Florida, these are being investigated, and we’re learning from each and every single one of these crashes.”

Eimers went on to say, “I’d love to see Governor DeSantis sign that into law at the in the next legislative session.”

Neighbors of the canal that took a life Monday night agreed that guardrails could be a good idea. Florida Highway Patrol is still investigating the deadly crash.