Abstract
Gravel-filled arrester beds, also called safety-escape ramps or vehicle run-out areas, have long been a road-safety feature for safely stopping heavy road vehicles from running off the road. In the recent past, there has been consideration given to installing these features on highway access ramps to provide safe areas to stop passenger cars driving at highway speeds. The work presented in this article was performed to investigate the behaviour of standard-size passenger cars on gravel-filled arrester beds, with a particular focus on the achievable vehicle decelerations and the ability of the arrester beds to safely stop a passenger car coasting in an uncontrolled manner. The findings show that the achievable average decelerations are in the range of 0.3 g for coasting vehicles and up to 0.9 g when the vehicles are braking. The results prove that more research is required to quantify the influence of the gravel parameters on the achievable decelerations.
Highlights
Road traffic safety is one of the fundamental requirements to achieve the sustainable development goals
From the literature review presented in the Introduction it is obvious that very few high-quality measurements of the achievable decelerations for passenger cars on gravel arrester beds have been published to date
The test results show that a gravel-filled arrester bed with a gravel granularity of 16–32 mm can decelerate a free-coasting passenger car with an average deceleration of up to 0.294 g (2.88 m/s2 )
Summary
Road traffic safety is one of the fundamental requirements to achieve the sustainable development goals. This is outlined in several strategic documents issued by global and regional organizations such as the World Health Organization [1], the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development [2]. The European Commission [3], as well as in national strategies [4]. These documents emphasise the importance of planning and design of safe road infrastructure and its role in the efforts of achieving sustainable development. Gravel-filled arrester beds are currently being investigated as a potential response that can further improve the safety of the exit lines of highways
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