Modern Concrete Safety Barriers State of the Art 2010

Since the beginning of the development of concrete vehicle restraint systems in the 1960s with the introduction of the New Jersey profile in the United States quite a lot of efforts have been taken by researchers, authorities and industry worldwide to raise effectiveness and safety of concrete and steel barriers. In Europe concrete barriers started to be noticed in the 1990s. With the establishment of the European Standard EN 1317 [1,2] in 1998 the “passive traffic safety issue” was given the right importance and platform for further developments. Starting 2011 the CE-marking for vehicle restraint systems will bring reliable product quality and validated and trustable crash tests results to a next level. So what is state of the art today? How safe is concrete and how much technology we can find in a modern concrete safety barrier? A summary of 15 years of research and development, more than 100 crash tests on concrete barriers and feedback from applications in more than 30 countries worldwide might give some answers.