Freeway barriers

[mustapha]

Has anyone seen the new barriers on the Western Ring Rd and many other Melbourne freeways? They consist of 3 horizontal metal 'ropes' that would absorb a lot of a cars force when hit. The strange thing is that it only lines one side of the road (in the middle) so that cars can still hit light poles etc. It think it is now harder to miss the poles because if you lose control and if you luckily miss a pole you will hit the barrier and deflect on to the next pole. Wouldn't it be safer if both sides of the middle section had barriers so inbound and outbound traffic is protected from hitting a pole? Does anyone know if this is scheduled or is it going to be left the way it is?

 

[Stucey]

I think that they are the things that the motorbike riders were complaining about. Apparantly they can like decapitate a motorbike rider if he slides into it???? I don't know....I think they are what you're talking about

 

[Mooster7]

If you hit a light pole at highway speed, you are in some trouble, but it is just you. The idea with putting a barrier in the middle isn't to keep some dumb ass from wrecking into a pole. It's to keep said dumb ass from losing control, crossing the median and going head on with oncoming traffic (with a two hundred KPH relative closing speed). These are very messy and cause a hell of a lot of paperwork for fire & ambulance personnel. Not to mention that brains bleach the color out of your clothing.

Too bad for the motorcyclists, but my take is that getting decapitated is just as dead as going into the oncoming lanes or eating a concrete jersey barrier. For my two cents, I bet the triple strand looks better than miles & miles of concrete barrier. Peace,

 

[roobear]

They have them on the eastern freeway too. A taxi driver was trying to tell me how stupid they were, because he'd heard a speding driver veered off the road and got his head cut off. My argument was that if I was driving home from the city at 100kmh and someone from was coming at me head-on at 100+kmh, I would be more than comfortable with his decapitation, as long as it avoided mine.