Skip to main content

Report into passively safe lighting columns

Lighting columns and other roadside structures such as overhead gantries play an essential role in road safety, by improving night time visibility or giving information to drivers. However old generation units themselves pose a potential hazard as they can be impacted by vehicles departing the roadway and potentially with fatal results in the event of a high speed crash. This is why newer passively safe columns have been developed, which are designed to collapse in a controlled fashion when impacted, reduci
November 16, 2015 Read time: 1 min

Lighting columns and other roadside structures such as overhead gantries play an essential role in road safety, by improving night time visibility or giving information to drivers. However old generation units themselves pose a potential hazard as they can be impacted by vehicles departing the roadway and potentially with fatal results in the event of a high speed crash. This is why newer passively safe columns have been developed, which are designed to collapse in a controlled fashion when impacted, reducing the risk of death or injury to vehicle occupants.

This paper investigates some of the key issues for passively safe columns. Click here to view more.

Related Content

  • Protection from trees
    February 27, 2012
    The novel TreeFend protection system from Highway Care is now in use along the A167 dual carriageway, at Chester-le-Street in the UK.
  • Brunei sees increased road deaths
    January 4, 2016
    Road crashes in Brunei caused more deaths in 2015 compared with 2014. The data from Brunei's Fire and Rescue Department shows that from January to November 2015, there were 15 road deaths compared with 10 fatalities from road crashes in 2014. In the period under review, the department obtained 76 calls to assist in lifting drivers and passengers trapped in ruined vehicles as opposed to 92 calls obtained in the preceding year. Serious injuries, however, dropped year-on-year from 92 to 65 in the 11 reporting
  • Europe’s single vehicle crashes
    February 7, 2018
    A third of road deaths in the EU are caused by collisions that involve a single motorised vehicle where the driver, rider and/or passengers are killed but no other road users are involved. Nearly 7300 road users lost their lives in 2015 in SVCs in the EU. Around 94,800 people have died in such collisions in the last 10 years. Across the EU, the total number of people killed in SVCs was cut by 43% over the period 2005-2014. Deaths caused by collisions of this type have fallen a bit faster than road dea
  • UK: vehicle overloading convictions down but problem persists
    March 9, 2015
    Overloading of vehicles in the United Kingdom continues to be a serious issue, according to data from the government’s Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) and Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (VOSA). The report, Annual Effectiveness 2013/2014, documents data on driving offences for heavy and light goods vehicles, public service vehicles and trailers. The number of convictions for overloading heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) was 147, down from 231 in 2012/13 and 166 a year earlier. But overloading rema