Motorway barriers

Hagar

Should all motorways have "Armco" barriers rather than the "stake and cable" that are on many stretches of road?

Have a look at this clip and decide would a stake and cable have stopped the truck crossing the median. Tha Armco did and stopped a relatively minor accident from turning into a head-on pile-up into oncoming traffic.

Spitfire666

the cable barriers wouldnt have even budged at that truck. ive seen a car hit them at 100mph and just get pushed back off them.

Theres no way the truck would have went through the cable barrier.

Mitch Connor

they should all be Armco barriers. Cable barriers are just dangerous, and soon to be illegal to put up.

Spitfire666

they are not all that dangerous. most things will just bounce off them. the only problem that might occur is if a biker hits them, but at the same time a biker wont fair any better hitting armco

Hagar

The truck driver swerved around a lot trying to regain control and hit the barrier a second time. Would the cable still have been intact to hold the second impact or would it have been stretched from the first impact.

Another point look at the amount of damage to the barriers elsewhere in that clip, would cable still be functional after repeated impacts?

Victor

I'm not sure if speed was the (only) problem. If you look at the left of the video, just as the truck comes into view, he already seems to be on the hard shoulder.

Its quite possible there was something else involved, possibly to do with the vehicle (accident victim?) in the hard shoulder.

A bend that (apparently) sharp would have an Armco in an Irish situation.

Mitch Connor

Spitfire666 wrote:

they are not all that dangerous. most things will just bounce off them. the only problem that might occur is if a biker hits them, but at the same time a biker wont fair any better hitting armco

they'd be less likely to lose their head, or some other body part.

Spitfire666

the cables wouldnt even budge if hit. i was at the barrier when the car hit it doing about 100mph and the cables hadnt budged. the car bounced out and hit it again 2 or 3 times and not a hint on the cables that anything had happened.

If a biker hit armco at motorway speeds he would loose something.

Mitch Connor

Spitfire666 wrote:

the cables wouldnt even budge if hit. i was at the barrier when the car hit it doing about 100mph and the cables hadnt budged. the car bounced out and hit it again 2 or 3 times and not a hint on the cables that anything had happened.

If a biker hit armco at motorway speeds he would loose something.

If cable barriers are so safe and fine, why are the EU in the process of mking them illegal? Why have certain countries already made them illegal?

An Armco barrier will hurt you, and cable barrier will cut you.

Spitfire666

well i agree that they are dangerous for anyone not in a car/truck/bus but cant see anything else being much better

KTRIC

From a bikers point of view cable barriers are lethal.

A member of a online group I'm in was killed last weekend by one when it hit it his leg was cut clean off and he blead to death on the side of the road. I'm not going to post the email that I recieved about it as it would be disrespectful to his family and its too graphic.

Victor

Sorry to hear that. Where did it happen?

KTRIC

Victor wrote:

Sorry to hear that. Where did it happen?

It was in the North of Germany, he was just unlucky enough to have it happen on a road with some of the remaining cable barriers. As far as I know it was a mountain road and it was on a corner so maybe the barrier was put there was a quick fix until something else was available.

Spitfire666

without being disrepectful, at the speed he was going for the cable to take his leg off, would he have been any better hitting anything else?

My posts are just on what i have witnessed first hand so not disputing that they are dangerous to bikers

KTRIC

Spitfire666 wrote:

without being disrepectful, at the speed he was going for the cable to take his leg off, would he have been any better hitting anything else?

My posts are just on what i have witnessed first hand so not disputing that they are dangerous to bikers

He was taking a left hand bend and the belly stand on the bike (a kawasaki w650) caught a lump of tarmac, it flipped him over the other side of the road and he hit the barrier, the barrier cut his leg off and he ended up in a ditch. He blead to death and I think he wasn't found for a while.

Horrible way to go, if i was going to have a bike accident and die I'd rather hit a wall and end it early.

Seth Brundle

The stakes used to retain the cables would also be lethal to bikers.
These types of barrier are AFAIK only used because of costs!

Spitfire666

horrible way to go but again,i cant see him hitting anything else with that force and fairing any better

ciarsd

Just from my own personal observations from numerous previous accidents (on the N4 in particular), these cables are not worth it and offer little protection after being hit once.
A recent accident on the M4 close to the Celbridge interchange proved this, there was nothing left of the cabling and posts used to support them after a one car accident (a small car at that).
I'd hate to think what they'd do to a biker - didn't one unfortunate die on the then recently opened M7 a couple of years back?

8k2q1gfcz9s5d4

they are supposed to be concrete barriers in place for motorways. on the new motorway to galway (cant think of its name n6?) its all concrete. this came into law nearly 2 years ago when there was a crash on the athlone dual carrageway when a car went through the armco, onto oncoming trafic. it happened in the middle of the night, nobody was badly hurt, within a month they started repacing the armco with concrete. The m50 will eventualy have concrete as well, i think they are waiting for the upgrade to finish before they are put in place

Seth Brundle

The new stretch from Kinnegad to Tyrrelspass (and presumably the section due to open heading towads Athlone) isn't actually motorway but it dual carriageway yet as you say it sports a concrete barrier!
The concrete barrier on the most of the sections of the M50 being upgraded are already in pace.

seamus

I'm guessing from the clip, that there's a road hazard such as oil just around the corner. The car parked perpendicular on the hard shoulder seems to have suffered some damage, and the armco seems badly damaged at that point.

I'm more amazed at how well the truck seems to have fared from the collision.

I've always had a problem with the wire barriers, and not necessarily from a biking point of view. Simple physics will tell you that anything hitting the wire barrier will exert more pressure on each of the wires, than the same object hitting a large solid object such as an armco - the force of the impact will be spread out across the entire height of the armco. The wires will almost certainly act in a cheese slicer fashion in any impact, which makes them unpredictable as to the outcome.

whosedaddy?

The main draw back of cable barriers is that once an accident happens - even if they don't snap - the entire stretch from anker to anker is potentially unsafe! And if not checked properly / or repaired - the next car hitting the cable may just go straight through!!!!

I'm not a fan of those unside-down y shaped concrete barriers.
A friend of mine and his wife got killed in Germany when their car (convertible) made contact with them, the front tyre started to run up the barrier and car flipped over...!!!!

The profile shape was a bit different, but I'm always thinking about them when looking at the m50 roadworks and all the other new duallers with those barriers.

testicle

Tauren wrote:

they'd be less likely to lose their head, or some other body part.

Closed coffin or open?

testicle

Tauren wrote:

If cable barriers are so safe and fine, why are the EU in the process of mking them illegal? Why have certain countries already made them illegal?

I've seen this ****e spouted by bikers before. I still have to see any legislation from any EU country making them illegal. The EU itself can't make anything illegal, so that's part of your theory thrown out the window.

8k2q1gfcz9s5d4

thats true, its still dual carrageway. its speed linit is only 100km, i have seen the guards out with their speed cameras around the kinnegad section more than once! once the next streact is done, i supposed to upgraded to a motorway, dont know why is isnt a motor way now

Altreab

kbannon wrote:

The new stretch from Kinnegad to Tyrrelspass (and presumably the section due to open heading towads Athlone) isn't actually motorway but it dual carriageway yet as you say it sports a concrete barrier!
The concrete barrier on the most of the sections of the M50 being upgraded are already in pace.

Its not a motorway yet since the county council still havent got around to doing the required legalities to make it a motorway.

Seth Brundle

There are lay-bys which I presume wouldn't be allowed. There are (IIRC) also farmers access points along it (either that or the farmers just park there).

maidhc

testicle wrote:

I've seen this ****e spouted by bikers before. I still have to see any legislation from any EU country making them illegal. The EU itself can't make anything illegal, so that's part of your theory thrown out the window.

The EU can make lots of things illegal without necessarily having a great deal of support from the member states. I have no idea about the barriers being made illegal though.

I thought one of the benefits of the cable was that is is a bit more forgiving when hit by a car, and will catch the vehicle rather than bouncing it back.

I can sympathise with the bikers, but if a biker crashes at 120km/h, it doesn't really matter if he hits a mattress; the odds of survival are remote.

Seth Brundle

They may not be doing 120km/h. These barriers are on dual carriageways also where the speed is lower.

Spitfire666

@seamus and whosedaddy?
Believe it or not, the cables dont actualy cut through the car. the car would hit the cable and rebound off it. where as with armco, the vehicle just makes **** of them. look at the video again and see how effective the armco would be having been hit by the truck? it wou=nt do much good on the ground.

Ive seen cable barriers take hit after hit and not budge.

And about the biker thing again, id be more concerned about the vertical posts on all types of barrier more then the horizontal part of the barrier.

whosedaddy?

Spitfire666: I didn't say the cables cut through the car... the other way round. I have seen damaged cables on the M1 a while ago - they were not fixed for quite some time.

Re bikers, yes the vertical posts are the dangerous bit.. In Germany some bikers got decapitated when they slide though underneath the horizonal barrier, then they slowly started fitting cushions around the exposed poles (the road authorities that is - not the bikers ).

The Doktor

testicle wrote:

I've seen this ****e spouted by bikers before. I still have to see any legislation from any EU country making them illegal. The EU itself can't make anything illegal, so that's part of your theory thrown out the window.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/actionnetwork/F?thread=3327718

The Doktor

There are little or no stats on this. However studies have been done on motorcycle collisions with various types of barriers. The main cause of injuries is the posts stuck in the ground. There are various types of posts (different shapes) and we use the most dangerous type.
Research in California, France and Germany has indicated that the usual accident scenario involving a motorcyclist with a vehicle restraint is that the rider initially loses control and falls from the machine sliding into the barrier or safety fence at a shallow angle. Where safety fence with exposed posts is employed, the greater forward speed of a rider leads to a collision with the post with serious and often fatal consequences. Extremities are readily amputated and major internal injuries caused. A similar collision with a featureless concrete barrier or an additional lower beam which covers the posts, results in a lower sideways impact with the momentum of the rider scrubbed off by contact with the barrier and road surface. If the rider is wearing adequate protective clothing, injuries should be minimised.

As regards the posts used, there are different shaped ones. Some were found to cause less injury. However these were more expensive. In ireland, we use the most dangerous type on the rope barriers.

With Wire rope type barriers they have more post exposed than any other type, so they are going to do a lot more damage to a rider who hits them
Also there have been studies which shows that in an upright collision with a wire rope barrier the rider is actually directed into the posts. It was found that even in a low speed collision with the barrier (60kph) the rider would get their legs caught in the rope, be then directed to the posts, and thrown over the barrier causing serious and non survivable injuries.
In many European countries they are now starting to use "motorcycle friendly" barriers, which are like the usual armco, but have an added lower barrier to stop the rider hitting the posts. Also in norway, denmark and holland the wire rope barriers have been banned.

impr0v

There's a long way between "prominent MEPs have now suggested a ban in the European Union" and an actual ban.

Armco barriers without an extra low beam aren't much safer to bikers than the rope construction. Afaik in Ireland there aren't any low beams fitted, though I'm open to being proved wrong on this. Essentially situations where a biker comes into contact with the barrier at knee-hip height while in an upright situation are few and far between, the majority of contacts are when the biker is on the ground and sliding, and the poles are the part of the barrier that does the damage. This is the case with both armco and the wire-rope construction.

The justification for the wire rope isn't purely fiscal, it is quicker to erect making it more suited to a retrofit on live carriageways, and has improved energy absorption capabilities, thereby reducing the rebound of vehicles back into traffic.

EDIT: posted before the doktor posted the above.

testicle

The Doktor wrote:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/actionnetwork/F?thread=3327718

Norway is not in the EU.

The Doktor

testicle wrote:

Norway is not in the EU.

Read the article... Denmark has removed all of theirs, and Holland has banned their use.

_Kaiser_

The Doktor wrote:

As regards the posts used, there are different shaped ones. Some were found to cause less injury. However these were more expensive. In ireland, we use the most dangerous type on the rope barriers.

In other words, the cheapest I'll bet :rolleyes:

The Doktor

Kaiser2000 wrote:

In other words, the cheapest I'll bet :rolleyes:

emmm... yeah:D

_Kaiser_

The Doktor wrote:

emmm... yeah:D

I meant moreso how if it's cheap and "ah it'll be grand" then you can be sure it's the option we'll get every time :mad:

impr0v

That's neither necessarily fair nor true.

Since you've concluded that the currently used poles, which have a something approximating to an I-shaped cross section, are cheaper than the poles with a circular or elliptical cross section, let's say for arguments sake that they are 15% cheaper. It may be more or less, but the 15% will serve as an approximation.

In order to justify the use of the more expensive poles in purely financial terms, and for all we know there may be no suppliers in the country, or there are Irish (i.e. modified British) standards issues with them, you'd have to show the following:

That the small percentage, of the small percentage (of overall traffic) of bikers in this country, who come off their bikes and slide into such barriers (on the small percentage of the overall network that these barriers are utilised on) at speeds and angles of entry which won't kill them, regardless of what they hit, will suffer injuries from colliding with the circular poles that are less severe than those that would have been inflicted by the I shaped poles, by a quantifiable figure X.

X can be calculated from the sum of the difference in the following factors between the two injury severity levels: insurance claim costs; medical costs; loss of productivity over the rest of his/her life as a result of the injury; the cost of long term care/rehabilitation; and perhaps more criteria.

While the barriers have been installed on a small percentage of the overall road network, the lengths they have been installed on are not insignificant, and comprise large sections of many of the major interurbans. In other words, the 15% difference would amount to a significant sum. Would it be greater or less than X?

Do you think that there are enough accidents where the type of poles would make a real difference to injuries sustained to justify the extra expense? Personally, I don't have the data above to show it, but I seriously doubt it.

The equation is further complicated if you attempt to include other elements of the roads program where the money would have to come from to make up the difference, stretches of road where car (the vast majority of the road-using vehicles) accidents occur with almost predictable frequency and the funding for which may already be precarious.

My point is that it's not necessarily an outbreak of 'it'll do' thinking, it's just as likely to be the result of cold calculation and risk assessment.

EDIT: typo

The Doktor

Improv, I know what yer sayin, and lets be honest money is a big factor in why they use these barriers. But the reasons behind the banning in a few countries has a lot to do with cost. Im sure the politicians went on about how its to save lives, but what has been found with wire rope barriers is that they are cheap to install but with the cost of maintenance added, the total costs are actually comparable to installing motorcyclist friendly barriers in the first place..
I would say the reason the wire barriers are in is because a few years ago there was a row over motorways having no barriers, and these ones were a quick solution... but in the end they will cost us just as much...

Victor

whosedaddy? wrote:

I'm not a fan of those unside-down y shaped concrete barriers.

Jersey Barriers?

http://images.google.ie/images?hl=en&q=Jersey+Barriers&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2