Every road or highway should be constructed in a way that guarantees and ensures comfortable, convenient and most importantly, safe transportation of people and various kinds of goods and materials. But car crashes and other similar accidents are very common events on the roads, and sometimes valuable lives are lost. There is a need for protective equipment to be installed on the roads, such as road safety fences and road safety barriers.
The road safety barriers and fences prevent and protect vehicles from running off the road in cases of an accidents or a car crash. However, there is a difference between the road safety barriers and safety fences. The road safety barriers are durable and strong enough to withstand high impacts, whereas the safety fences are not strong enough to withstand high force impacts. The fences are designed to be capable to absorb the kinetic energy from the impact. The road safety barrier system is being widely implemented all over Australia because it offers many benefits and increases safety levels on the roads.
When on the road, drivers can loose control over their vehicles because of tough weather conditions, alcohol or drugs consumption, driver negligence or error, fatigue, mechanical failure of the vehicle, speeding above the limit, etc. These factors can lead to serious car accidents, injuries and even death. For this reason, it is extremely important for the roads to be designed with additional safety equipment like the safety road barriers. Road safety barriers are usually placed at the middle of the road, but can also be installed at one end of the road. Main reasons for installing road safety barriers on the roads are:
- To protect and prevent out of control vehicles from going into the lane of other vehicles. For this reason, the safety road barriers are placed on the middle of the road
- To protect the vehicles from falling into a lope. The road safety barriers should be placed at one end of the road if there is a drop of 5 or more meters near the road
- To prevent an out-of-control vehicle from crashing and hitting a road side object. Safety road barriers should be installed on one end of the road if there are various objects near the road like: large traffic signs, bridge pier, poles etc.
The importance of safety road barriers can be seen by the benefits they provide:
- high containment
- increased safety
- low maintenance costs
- reduced traffic jams and congestion, etc.
Road safety barriers help minimize the number of accidents associated with run-off road and direct vehicle crashes. Therefore, they should be considered and included in every road construction project.
