Importance of Vehicle Structure and Geometry on the Performance of Roadside Safety Features

In real-world collisions with traffic rails and other roadside safety structures, a successful outcome is dependent on the structural and geometric properties of both the impacting vehicle and the roadside structure. In the many years of full-scale crash testing of highway safety appurtenances, a number of dramatic test failures have been observed which illustrate the importance of vehicle/traffic-barrier interactions. The following paper provides examples of crash tests and real world accidents in which poor interaction between the vehicles and traffic barrier were the principal cause of failure. There is a need for barrier designers and vehicle designers to better- understand each other's methodologies such that protection of the motoring public is maximized.