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Barriers, or the lack of them, became an issue after the Selby rail

22nd March 2001, Page 36
22nd March 2001
Page 36
Page 37
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Page 36, 22nd March 2001 — Barriers, or the lack of them, became an issue after the Selby rail
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

crash. As CM has campaigned for

better standards for many years, we look again at what can be done to keep vehicles apart from each other, or stop them leaving the

road at high speed on Britain's motorways. Patrick Hook reports.

The subject of safety barriers has again been raised. The awful sequence of events which led up to the Selby rail crash in Yorkshire has turned people's minds once again to the issues of safety and containment. The difference this time is that the questions about the safety fences have less to do with the standard of build and more to do with where and how they should be placed.

Many people are familiar with the European standard for the construction of safety barriers. The problem is that although this standard was adequate for the period when it was written, the 1960s, it has failed to keep pace with the increasing speed and size of the vehicles on the roads.

Last year the Highways Agency commissioned a review of barriers by Mouchel, the object of which was to ensure harmonisation with our European partners. It seems that in spite of an EC standard there may be variations and, sensibly, the Highways Agency wants to ensure that our own standards are at least as good as those elsewhere.

Since the Selby rail crash, another enquiry has been ordered by the Agency, this time from the Transport Research Laboratory, which is charged with "collecting data to prepare a factual report of road features and road conditions at the time of the accident".

The Health & Safety Executive is conducting a separate investigation. It is too early to know what these reports will conclude, but it's a fair bet that, whatever modifications are recommended, they will still be insufficient to prevent cross-over collisions by HGVs.

For better or worse, the present policy is based on the likelihood of an accident involving a vehicle of more than 1.5. tonnes—the maximum weight the barrier is designed to stop—hitting the barrier at more than 7omph and at

an angle greater than 200. The question boils down to the statistical probability: at a given moment and at a given point on the highway, what is the chance of such a collision occurring?

The answer was provided by

the Transport Research Laboratory, whose spokesman says: "HGVs are not seen as a problem. They do not feature in the accident statistics to any great extent, and because they don't use the outside lane they are not thought to pose the same level of risk as saloon cars."

The argument is not without its attractions. Last year there were 2o,755,o0o cars on Britain's roads which were involved in just under 90,000 accidents, as opposed to 428,000 HGVs and T 4,4 T 6 accidents. Very few of these were cross-over accidents, and fewer still involved HGVs. But the question of barriers might soon become academic. HGVs in America are already fitted with collision-avoidance technologies, including forward and D D side impact avoidance systems. In Australia, fully autonomous trucks are in use on open-cast mining sites, where huge, driverless vehicles automatically weave around obstructions, including pedestrian and vehicular traffic. And in Japan, fully autonomous systems are expected to be commercially available within the next five to seven years.

Chrysler Motors claims that advanced intelligent vehicle systems will result in an 8o% reduction in collisions within io years. This is, in part, reflected in an EC target which aims for a 50% reduction in accidents by 2010.

Yet even if collision avoidance technology were widely available within the next few years, the life expectancy of the average motor vehide, both cars and trucks, makes it highly unlikely that intelligent collision avoidance would be an effective weapon in the short term.

For this the Highways Agency must continue to look at the provision of higher, heavier, more robust safety fences at the approaches to bridge supports and other points of vulnerability. Of course, it would be unrealistic to expect any review to conclude that every mile of safety barrier should be replaced immediately.

"We recognise that such a demand would be impractical," says Linda Mullins, whose husband was killed when an HGV crashed through a safety barrier in 1998. "But the fact of the matter is that the specification of the safety barriers is now more than 30 years old. What we would like to see is the provision of stronger barriers whenever new roads are built, or general maintenance requiring the replacement of the existing barriers."

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Organisations: Highways Agency

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