New Guardrail Guidelines Will Enhance Highway Safety

Federal Highway Administration
September 30, 1998

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, September 30, 1998
Contact: Virginia Miller
Telephone: 202-366-0660
FHWA 43-98

U.S. Transportation Secretary Rodney E. Slater today announced new performance standards for roadside safety devices, such as guardrails, become effective Oct. 1, 1998, and that they will improve safety for a wider variety of vehicles, especially the growing number of pickups, minivans and sport utility vehicles in the United States.

"Safety is President Clinton’s highest transportation priority," Secretary Slater said. These common sense guidelines will make our roads, already among the safest in the world, even safer for Americans in the 21st century."

Roadside safety devices include guardrails, concrete median barriers, bridge rails and familiar orange work-zone barrels. Their purpose is to keep motor vehicles from striking objects, like pillars, bridges or trees, that would make a crash more severe. According to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), running off the road crashes are a factor in more than one-third of the nation’s traffic fatalities.

"The marred and damaged guardrails we’ve all seen along our roads are evidence of crashes, many of which go unreported, that could have been more serious," FHWA Administrator Kenneth R. Wykle said. "The new guidelines will improve safety for all motorists."

The new guidelines describe a series of full-scale crash tests, now with pickups as well as other motor vehicles, that must be successfully performed on guardrails and other roadside safety devices before they may be installed. The guidelines stem from crash testing procedures recommended by the Transportation Research Board. The procedures call for roadside safety devices to pass a series of crash tests that vary by size of vehicle used, speed, angle of hit and location of hit.

Contracts advertised after Oct. 1 that involve installation of roadside safety devices on the National Highway System will require that they comply with the new guidelines. The FHWA encourages state and local authorities to require compliance on other roads.

The implementation of these guidelines is part of an overall FHWA safety program to reduce the number and severity of run-off-the-road crashes through better designed guardrails, rumble strips on highway shoulders, improved signage, improved pavement markings, and skid resistant pavements.

Research to update the guidelines was conducted by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) and funded by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO). While the research was underway, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 mandated the inclusion of light trucks into the crash test guidelines. The FHWA adopted the guidelines developed by the NCHRP and described in NCHRP Report 350.