Road Safety Barriers – international experiences and new directions for Australia

Australian road fatalities may have halved since 1990, but all is not well. Australian fatality reduction has plateaued where our international peers see continued decline . Serious injuries from road traffic accidents have been suggested to be on the rise . And if you’re a crash statistic in Australia – you’re three times more likely to be a fatality than in the UK, Canada, Germany or Sweden. So are there lessons to be learnt from abroad?_x000D_
Australian road safety experts agree better infrastructure, and specifically road safety barriers, are part of the new solution . This paper focusses on European (EN1317 compliant) safety barriers, which are lesser known in Australia than NHCRP-MASH compliant barriers. We present European experiences and state-of-the-art development directions that may help Australian road designers, specifiers and authorities make roads safer._x000D_
We suggest EN1317 compliant barrier systems offer a good direction for greater injury reduction on Australian roads, with economic incentives compared to other options._x000D_