Crash barriers, Yes. Implementation, Difficult

Even though the government authorities and agencies are supportive, the actual implementation suffers. For example, on the fast corridors like the Agra-Lucknow Expressway or the Delhi-Meerut connectivity where crash barriers (untested) are going to be installed, the speed of the vehicle is 120- 130km/hr. If somebody hits the barrier at that speed, the impact it is going to be very high. And that is cause of concern for us.

Despite all the good features, the price of the wire rope barrier is much cheaper than the conventional barriers. It is mindset and not understanding the standards. That is another cause of serious concern.

In a nutshell, we need a single point to implement this. The government should list down the names of the certified crash barrier manufacturers from whom the contractor should source the material like how they do for cement and other raw material buying. In this way, we can have a level playing field to work with. It is a competitive world and we are fine with competition but all players need to be certified.

Recently, the government had notified that it is going to bid for 20 projects in 2016-17 across the country. But details about the consultant for the DPR and who is preparing it, are not known to us. Quite probably, the officials in charge may not be fully aware of the available technologies. The tenders will be bid just because the barriers are to be installed in these projects, so neither the wire rope barrier providers nor any newer technologies’ supplier are going to get business. In that way, we are afraid, we are not going to see any new technology being implemented on ground in another two-three years.

Bharat Anand: We have been suggesting to the IRC to put uniform standards in place for the last three to four years. The code for the crash barriers was published in 2015, and till date there has been no implementation on the ground. We all talk about road safety, even the government is talking about saving lives on the road. It is a known fact accidents happen because of negligent driving, but that cannot be the only reason behind a huge number of accidents. In Sweden, they follow “forgiving road environment” and “zero deaths by 2020”. The environment should be such that it forgives the mistake/fault committed by the driver. The government and the officials should understand that Crash Tested Wire Rope Barriers, Metal Beam Barriers and Bridge Parapets can have a high containment level and yet keep the impact severity low (least impact on vehicle inhabitants).

Concrete Barriers cannot have low impact severity and are used only at locations where risk protected beyond the barrier is more than the risk to inhabitants caused by the high impact severity. In India, we do not talk about impact severity at all which is one of the important concerns world over.

Currently, the conventional metal beam barrier which is being used has failed all kinds of crash tests but is in use even now. The US has now discontinued using that design barriers. But we feel by creating a wall of these crash barriers we could bring the accident rate down. This is a big issue and it must come from the government. The government has been following what has been followed for the last 20-30 years. Until and unless change happens from top to bottom things will not change.

The untested barriers are our major concern. Twenty years back the design requirements were different. Previously there used to be Maruti cars but now there are Mercedes cars too; so the kind of vehicles and speeds impacting the barriers are different. Another example is the raised kerbs which are considered killers all over the world whereas in India we continue to build 250-300mm height kerbs. About 80% of road deaths happen due to cross-over accidents and these kerbs end up launching vehicles to the other side. Mumbai-Pune Expressway is a very good example where a 12-m median was built without a kerb or barrier. There were a lot of accidents. Later, when a 13-14km wire rope barrier was installed, the cross-over accidents went down by over 90%.

Whether wire rope barrier or metal beam barrier, each has its own design. In crash barriers, there are three things that should be of major concern: one, Containment and two, Deflection of the barrier. The IRC manual only talks about containment level, unfortunately it has clubbed three containment levels together. The containment level is first tested on cars, then medium trucks and then larger vehicles like buses but in the manual, it is clubbed together and mentioned as barriers for all these vehicles. The government is trying to take steps in this direction. But, if a comprehensive approach is not adopted from top to bottom and an environment is not created for us to do business easily, we will find it difficult to operates.

Mangala Chandran