Unsatisfactory roadside barrier system performance in real-world collisions: Lessons to be learned.

Roadside safety has progressively improved in the past decade with the development of new and better highway barrier systems, break-away poles, and energy attenuates. In some cases these systems function well under laboratory conditions, but perform unsatisfactorily in certain roadside settings. This paper identifies some of the missing or miss-applied design criteria which are leading to real-world failure of techniques that have been laboratory proven in most cases.