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October 19, 2005

In Reply Refer To: HSA-10/CC-85B

Mr. Randy L. Warner
Director, Product R&D
SCI Products Incorporated
635 Lucknow Road
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 17110-1635

Dear Mr. Warner:

I have reviewed your October 10, 2005, letter to Mr. Richard Powers of my staff and the two-year summary of the in-service performance evaluation of your SCI100GM crash cushion that was sent with it. As noted in that letter, this two-year evaluation was specifically requested in the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) acceptance letter, CC-85, dated February 2, 2003. You reported over 40 impacts during the review period, the first occurring in August 2004 and the last in August 2005. Of these recorded crashes, approximately half were drive-away incidents with no police reports filed. In only one case were injuries reported and these were noted as minor. In most instances, total repair costs were reported to be well under $500.

Based on the data you submitted, I consider our request fulfilled but urge you to continue to monitor the performance of your product on an informal basis. In-service evaluation data on roadside hardware has always proven to be very difficult to obtain, but it remains essential that highway professionals constantly review field performance of all safety hardware to verify the adequacy of controlled certification testing and to identify potential problems that such testing does not reveal. I commend you and your staff for your efforts in collecting crash and performance data on your SCI units.

If you are willing to write a narrative report, with appropriate photographs of crash sites/attenuator damage, to accompany your summary data, I will send it to the FHWA field offices as an example of an in-service evaluation report to encourage similar efforts elsewhere for other safety appurtenances. Please contact Mr. Powers directly should you wish to pursue this suggestion.

Sincerely yours,

/original signed by George Ed Rice, Jr./
~for~
John R. Baxter, P.E.
Director, Office of Safety Design
Office of Safety

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