The use of barrier and guardrail design, and/or use, is a very complicated subject, open to many different designs and guidelines. Barrier rail considerations are a subset of roadside safety treatments. There are many sophisticated computer models now available to evaluate roadside safety, for example, ROADSIDE. The results of recent research have provided reasonably good guidelines for roadside safety, barrier rail and end treatments on state highways and other major roads. Generally these sophisticated models and guidelines do not apply to Low-Volume Rural Roads (LVRR). Local governments have tens of thousands of miles of LVRR where rights-of way are narrow, clear zones and traversable slopes cannot be provided and budgets are inadequate for a multitude of competing problems. The Kansas Department of Transportation (KDOT) contracted with the authors to review the state-of-the-art of roadside safety, interview local road personnel, study local roadside situations and develop guidelines on low-volume roads, roadside safety and barrier rail use. The computer program ROADSIDE was adapted to LVRR conditions and simplified guidelines for its use were developed for LVRR conditions. Finally, for those road jurisdictions requiring more simple guidelines, without the use of complicated computer program, computer results based on a range of LVRR conditions were complied and presented in a manual for easy use by personnel with responsibility for LVRR safety. The paper presents the results of the study, the highlights of the manual and the background material on which it was based. (A)
Samenvatting