Guardrails improve road safety

Guardrails, also known as crash barriers, are placed on roadways to prevent vehicles from driving off the edge of the road into something dangerous, such as a large object or a ravine, as well as to guide pedestrians to safe crossing points. It is dangerous to crash into a guardrail, but it is even more dangerous to go over the side of the road into whatever the rail was protecting. For this reason, guardrails are normally only placed where crossing the road boundary would be more dangerous than hitting the guardrail.

Guardrails are usually found on the sides of roadways, and sometimes in the central divider, to keep vehicles from crossing into oncoming traffic. There are different kinds of rails used for different purposes. The A-profile barrier, or Armco, is most often found at the edge of the roadway. These barriers are made to bend or break when hit by a vehicle, therefore absorbing some of the impact and deflecting the vehicle back onto the roadway.

Guardrails benefit pedestrians as well as motorists. By keeping uncontrolled vehicles on the roadway, the guardrail is effectively keeping them off the pavement or pedestrian paths. For pedestrians, a guardrail can mean the difference between life and death.

As well as improving safety for pedestrians and motorists, decorative guardrails can also brighten up drab city centres and streets by using colour and creative designs.

It is hard to standardize guardrails for all types of vehicles. Types that are made to work best when impacted by cars can be too low for lorries. Guardrails that work well with lorries may be too tall for motorcycles. Despite this difficulty, guardrail technology has been improving, and injuries due to impact with guardrails have gone down. This is in a large part due to new designs in barriers and especially the ends of the barriers, and to improved motorist awareness.

Optirail is another form of guardrail that is improving road safety. When installing guardrails there is always the possibility that the motorist’s vision will be obscured. This in turn puts pedestrians at risk at crossing points where the driver may not have seen the pedestrian approaching. Optirail is a high visibility guardrail that eliminates this problem by using slanted bars allowing motorists to anticipate when a pedestrian may be crossing the road.