Crash barriers, Yes. Implementation, Difficult

“A tested bridge parapet system would have gradually absorbed the impact of the vehicle and redirected it towards the carriageway gradually; thus absorbing most of the energy of the impact, unlike in the current scenario, where the impact was immediate and the vehicle was thrown with great velocity to the lightning pole. As the force of the impact with the Concrete Parapet and Light Pole were immediate, there was severe damage to the vehicle and caused an untimely death of most of the occupants,” added Bharat.

Our roads are becoming more unforgiving; the government is now stressing on building more Expressways where the vehicle speed is going to be 130km/hr, and if the barriers are not performance tested, then one can imagine the impact on the roads. It is going to be ‘killer roads’; there are bound to be more fatalities. When the riding quality of the vehicle is improving, the quality of road furniture is going backwards.

– VRK Eshwaran

Is the tyre option effective as stated by the authorities? “May be tyre is being thought of as a stop gap arrangement, as the concrete parapet once installed cannot be removed. In my honest opinion more than cost, the lack of proper guidelines and adaptation of technology which has changed more than 10-15 years ago worldwide is a bigger issue than the cost factor. The costs for tested metal beam and wire rope barriers are similar to those of conventional metal beam barriers and the cost of putting a tested bridge parapet would have been marginally more over the concrete parapet, if not the same,” clarified Bharat.

“Unfortunately, not many barriers exist for tunnels and speed control methods are the best solution for them. Roller Barriers could provide a safe environment inside tunnels but are highly priced.”

According to Rahul Saini, BDI group, Eastern Freeway being a narrow four lane road, there is hardly any space for centre median resulting in implementation of an extremely narrow median. “This causes opposite movement of the car very close to each other resulting in several blind spots across the stretch due to high glare of the oncoming vehicles. Similar problem was being faced on the old Mumbai Pune highway NH-4 that being a heavily dense 4 lane national highway. The BOT contractor has installed and maintained light barriers on the 104km stretch and the results have been remarkable in terms of reduction of accidents.”

Implementation of light barriers is the need of the hour on Eastern freeway to eradicate blind spots leading drivers to ram into sidewalls or centre medians. Any crash barrier installation on centre median in developed countries is with light barriers to obstruct the light.

KJ Ahn, Overseas Business Director, ETI, which is into roller barriers, stated that the product was invented by ETI Korea because the conventional barriers that has insufficient effectiveness could not protect human lives. “ We are working together with the local industry players for our future markets. I feel the Indian road authorities are very concerned about the cost of the barriers. They are talking about the conventional barriers such as the double beam barriers and concrete barriers which are less costly. But the authorities should be concerned about human life. So hopefully, this is a very good chance for the road authorities to move forward to adopt advanced technology.

It is also important to protect the lives of workers on the Highways, says Erwin Smeyers, CCO, Steur-Egghe, the manufacturer of TMA (Truck mounted Attenuators). The device protects the workers/staff from possible vehicle collision. Steur is already delivering its product in 26 countries from around the world.

Ground Challenges

Eshwaran: Till date we have installed 300kms of rope barriers in the country for various highway projects. It has worked very well and people have also appreciated the product. We can say it with confidence that, we have not lost a single life after the installations. We are encouraging and promoting this product in the market. We do have standards but it has a long way to go before it gets implemented on ground.

Safety Barrier Standards (Performance Standards) as adopted by the Government (Ref IRC 119) which is in line with global international standards for road safety barriers. The standard as notified by the government needs to be elucidated further to bring more clarity and remove any ambiguity so that the con One of the main issue and challenge is the implementation of the Road implementing agencies/authorities like Consultants and Contract Engineers find it is easy to implement.

We recently came to know that the ministry is coming out with a new standard for safety products whereas the Ministry’s own department IRC which is a standard body is formulating another standard which is contradictory. If two governmental bodies are working on a cross-purpose, it is a matter of serious concern.

There is a need to discuss on the day-to-day difficulties the technology operators face and the policy framework. We need to have independent engineers, contactors, concessionaires and consultants from the road sector from all over India joining the discussion. TrafficInfraTech Expo could bring all of them on a common platform.