HOUSTON – The bridge railing at the site of a deadly bus crash that killed two students is designated by the federal government as "not up to current acceptable standards." A KPRC 2 News investigation has located at least 415 other bridge railings in the Houston area with the same designation.
According to crash testing researchers, the type of railing used on the bridge at 610 and Telephone Road has not been tested in decades.
When it was installed in 1970, it met standards developed in 1962 that showed it could keep a vehicle built in that era from going over the bridge.
[RELATED: Photos: Fatal school bus crash along South Loop Freeway | TxDOT: Bridge railing performed as expected in deadly school bus crash]
The Texas Department of Transportation, the agency responsible for updating the bridge, maintains the bridge and railing are safe.
The Sept. 15 crash was not the first time a bus crash in Texas brought up concerns about an outdated bridge railing.
In 2008, a tour bus carrying a church group from Houston crashed in Sherman, Texas, and the National Transportation Safety Board found the railing on the bridge to be a contributing factor to the crash.
"The design of the railing did contribute to the bus leaving the bridge, and that perhaps a better-designed railing could have prevented or deflected the bus,” said Rob Ammons, a Houston attorney who represented victims’ families after the Sherman crash.
That railing was designed in the 1950s and had been given the same designation as the 610 and Telephone Road railing.
"I have a concern when you have a railing that's designed to a standard that's half a century old," Ammons said.
Using the Federal Highway Administration’s national bridge inventory database for 2014, Channel 2 Investigates located outdated bridge railings in highly trafficked areas like Interstate 45 at Broadway and I-45 at Woodridge, as well as Interstate 10 and Federal.
KPRC 2 News' analysis eliminated highways where no bridge railings were present.
“You just can't replace every single bridge, as long as they are deemed safe, and this one was deemed safe,” said U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold, a Republican who represents a district that stretches from Corpus Christi into the outskirts of the Houston area in Wharton County.
Farenthold is also a member of the House Transportation Committee.
“Are guardrails that don't meet the current standards as good as the guardrails or bridge rails that do?” asked Channel 2 Investigative reporter Jace Larson.
“Obviously not. You constantly see improvements in highway manufacturing. It's the way things go. We are always trying to get safer and safer,” said Farenthold.
Today’s standards require bridges to contain and redirect one small car or pickup truck back onto the roadway in a crash, according to the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A & M University.
When the 610 and Telephone Road overpass was built, the standard was just for one vehicle.
“Our current vehicles today are taller. They're heavier. Our barriers are covering a greater spectrum of vehicles on the roadway,” said William Williams, an associate research engineer at TTI.
According to TTI, there have never been bridge rail tests done with school buses.
But level five crash tests involving 18-wheelers have been successfully completed.
Williams said rails that are strong enough to stop the large vehicles are present on some of the busier roadways in Houston.
TTI confirmed that the bridge rails along the Gulf Freeway and Beltway 8 meet test level five standards.
However, the current standard for bridge railings in Texas is level three, which tested a crash involving a car and a pickup truck.
