Warrants for guardrails on embankments. Paper presented at the 52nd Annual Meeting of the Highway Research Board HRB, Washington, D.C., January 1973.

The highway-vehicle-object simulation model, a computer model that describes an automobile and is capable of predicting the dynamic response of the automobile traversing selected terrain, was used to study the behaviour of an standard-size automobile traversing embankment side slopes at various speeds and departure angles. The accelerations obtained were used to compute a severity index that was then compared with a similarly computed severity index of a vehicle impacting a W-beam guardrail with posts on 6¼ ft spacing. An equal-severity curve was then developed that can be used as a guardrail installation criterion.