Why Are Guardrails Important and What Are the Four Types of ...

Guardrails are an important additive portion of street safety infrastructure. They prevent vehicles from straying off the street into barriers or crossing into oncoming traffic. The article will throw light on the importance of guardrails, the Importance of Guardrail Reflectors, and the four predominant kinds of guardrails used extensively today.

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Importance of Guardrails

• Road Safety

Guardrails are paramount to road safety as they act like barriers to soak up all shocks in injuries, hence reducing the severity of crashes. They will prevent autos from leaving the road. This is quite paramount, especially in areas with steep embankments and sharp curves, and also hazardous roadside features like trees and poles.

• Lowering the Injury Level of Crashes

Guardrails will redirect automobiles lower back onto the roadway within the occasion of a collision, which minimizes the threat of rollover accidents and makes sure that the automobile stays on a secure path. This redirection significantly reduces the capability for severe injuries and fatalities.

• Protection of Pedestrians and Property

Guardrails provide a protective barrier between the cars and the pedestrians, bicyclists, and residences abutting the road. This kind of safety is important in city areas where, oftentimes, the foot traffic and vehicular traffic are within near proximity.

• The Role of Guardrail Reflectors

The application of guardrail reflectors makes the guardrails visible in the dark or during bad weather. The reflector allows easy visualization of the guardrail structures by drivers and hence the ability to navigate properly.

• Importance of Reflective Technology

Reflective technology used in guardrail reflectors ensures that light from vehicle headlights is reflected back to the driver, rendering the guardrails quite visible from a distance. This, in turn, is very critical in preventing injuries during low-light conditions.

• Types of Guardrail Reflectors

There are different styles of guardrail reflectors, such as reflective tapes, delineators, and pavement markers. Each type serves a unique purpose and is selected primarily based on road conditions and safety needs.

Four Kinds of Guardrails

W-Beam Guardrails

• Description: W-beam guardrails are the most commonly used type. They consist of a steel beam whose pass-section resembles the letter "W".
• Use: These guardrails are typically used on freeways and roads with moderate to high-speed limits.
• Advantages: They have excellent impact absorption and redirection capabilities.

Cable Guardrails

• Description: Cable guardrails consist of high-tension steel cables strung between posts.
• Use: They are typically used in medians and areas where a more forgiving barrier is required.
• Advantages: Cable guardrails are very effective in absorbing impact energy and are less harmful to vehicles upon impact.

Concrete Barriers

• Description: A precast concrete barrier is a strong, continuous barrier made of reinforced concrete. Also referred to as a Jersey barrier, this road safety device is extensively applied in construction zones, medians, and high-volume traffic areas.
• Advantages: They are reasonably resilient and offer an outstanding physical vehicle crossover barrier.

Box Beam Rail guardrails

• Description: Box beam guardrails are essentially hollow steel beams in a box shape and are mounted on posts.
• Usage: They are used in applications that require advanced levels of containment, such as bridges and overpasses.
• Advantages: They provide advanced levels of containment and re-direction capabilities of heavier vehicles.

How to Choose the Right Guardrail Manufacturer

In choosing a guardrail manufacturer, it is further important to remember years of experience as a manufacturer, quality of raw materials and conformance with safety standards. After all, a legitimate manufacturer like Alcolite takes pride in making sure their products conform to rigid safety specifications and are designed to create maximum protection.

Why Alcolite?

Alcolite, a leading Roadside Reflector Manufacturer, produces magnificent guardrail systems with reflective technology. With protection and innovation in mind, Alcolite's merchandise is designed to beautify road safety and reduce accident severity.

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Conclusion:

As such, guardrails and their reflectors are part of the road protection infrastructure. Guardrails protect motors, pedestrians, and assets by halting accidents and minimizing them in case they do occur. Knowing the types of guardrails and the importance of choosing a reliable manufacturer like Alcolite appreciably helps improvise these measures of road safety.

By Mark Petersen, PE

The No. 1 goal of every driver is to stay on the road. But sometimes, due to circumstances beyond our control (and some that are in our control), vehicles can go astray. Thanks to guardrails, many potentially tragic crashes instead result in just the inconvenience of a fender bender and insurance claims.

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation/Federal Highway Administration, the purpose of a guardrail is “first and foremost, a safety barrier intended to shield a motorist who has left the roadway.”

If your vehicle for some reason unintentionally left the roadway at a high rate of speed, the best-case scenario is that you’d eventually come to a stop with minimal damage to yourself, other people, or property.

But sometimes that’s not an option: Roads are lined with obstacles and potential hazards, such as trees, ditches, bridge piers, utility poles, bodies of water, and other roads. A guardrail serves as a barrier and/or a deflector, and it’s up to transportation engineers to figure out when and where to place guardrails that may benefit the most drivers in the most conditions.

Why are guardrails needed?

Most people probably don’t give guardrails a second look, but in reality, every guardrail placement is carefully calculated according to many factors. Chief among them: Since guardrails effectively become another potential point of impact on a roadway, engineers must weigh whether hitting a guardrail would be less harmful than hitting the object or obstacle that lies beyond.

Typically, transportation engineers want to limit the amount of guardrail placed as much as possible. While guardrails may be added as a retrofit to existing roads, newer roads may be designed to minimize roadside obstacles – and that’s where engineering experts come in. Options could include aligning a road on a smoother curve or filling in a ditch or ravine, entirely eliminating the need for guardrails.

But where guardrails are used, standards must be followed. The current standard is the Midwest Guardrail System (MGS). This relatively new standard (early s) came about due to the need to accommodate larger, heavier vehicles. MGS guardrails are designed to be slightly higher (31 inches compared with the old 27¾-inch standard), so they’re high enough to contain most trucks but low enough to still contain smaller vehicles and motorcycles. They also use blockouts, and rail splices occur at mid-span compared with occurring at the posts. While MGS is the standard, it’s acceptable to use older versions to match existing if small repairs are required on a long section.

Despite its name, MGS guardrails are not limited to use only in the Midwest. They are so named because they were researched, developed, and crash-tested at the Midwest Roadside Safety Facility on the campus of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

How do guardrails work?

Guardrails are meant to absorb the impact of a crash or deflect wayward vehicles, but it’s not as simple as placing a piece of metal along the road. Guardrails work as a system, which includes the guardrail itself, the posts, the soil in which the posts are driven, the connection of the guardrail to the posts, the end terminals, and the anchoring system at the end terminals. The two components that determine how well a guardrail will perform upon impact are the end terminal and the guardrail face.

Guardrail face: The face’s sole purpose is to redirect vehicles back onto the roadway should the need arise. The face extends along the roadway from one end terminal to another.

End terminal: Each end terminal must be treated to absorb or redirect energy upon impact. If hit head-on, an end terminal is designed to slide down the guardrail, flattening and redirecting it away from the vehicle until the vehicle eventually stops. If hit at an angle, the impact head may partially extrude the guardrail, essentially acting like a gate that opens to allow the vehicle to pass behind it.

Engineering expertise is needed

Engineers occasionally encounter unique situations during roadway reconstruction and rehabilitation. For example, if a guardrail length of need extends past a driveway or intersection, engineers must figure out a way to protect the structure or drop-off while still allowing for access. Typically, engineers would wrap the guardrail using a short radius section.

In other cases, slopes and alignments can be adjusted to avoid the use of guardrail altogether, thus saving the client upfront material costs along with long-term maintenance costs (not to mention potential expenses should they get hit and need to be repaired or replaced). Engineers can do cost estimates of options (e.g., guardrail vs. realignment), providing clients with all the information they need to assist in making design decisions.

Transportation experts can also help navigate the standards set forth in the various roadside design manuals, ensuring that minimum requirements are met while providing options to help clients meet their construction and maintenance budgets.

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