(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] Concrete barriers are used on highways
to separate traffic and protect drivers
from oncoming traffic.
These barriers may come
with higher attachments deployed to discourage people
on foot from crossing highways.
With no national guidelines for design,
there is a need to study the effectiveness
of these barriers to improve safety
for motorists and pedestrians.
The Texas Department of Transportation is working
with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute
to identify the types of attachments
that can be mounted to concrete barriers
and evaluate their performance and effectiveness.
- Occasionally, for whatever reason,
some folks will try to cross the median
on a freeway or an analogous type of roadway.
And a lot of fatalities occur with people who are hit
after crossing or on their way to cross the barrier.
So what we wanted to do here is determine what type
of attachments or extensions can we put on these barrier
to make them tall enough
and visible enough that would dissuade people
from wanting to cross them.
- The first step that we took it was actually to look
at existing attachments to barriers and think
about could we actually potentially use these systems
and repurpose them with the objective
of the per pedestrian crossing.
And so what we wanted to do is identify systems
that we could repurpose for their objective
and then evaluate them
to the current criteria that we have for high speed impacts.
- The key task was kind of determining the type
of systems that we wanted to kind of really look at.
So we have a couple of proprietary type systems that we kind
of investigated and the researchers
did some due diligence on those.
And we also have like a chain link fence type structure
that can be used in certain applications as well.
- Another thing that we did
was to actually develop a non-proprietary system
with the same objective
of trying to deter pedestrian crossing.
And that was with use
of a chain link fence that was appropriately designed
so that it would impede people
from just crossing or going over the barrier.
But at the same time
it would not present a hazard in terms of debris
when it's impacted by vehicles.
- The guidance that we'll provide to the districts
will provide some guidance on good locations to
provide this barrier if they're having a problem
if they're having historical crashes where pedestrians
are crossing.
And then of course once it's applied
it will reduce pedestrian fatalities.
It can't help but do that.
- We have options.
It's not just one.
And we actually found a few options and we have verified
through full scale crash testing that all these systems
are crash-worthy per the current federal standards.
So I'm confident that the results
of this project not only will benefit TxDOT
and the transportation for TxDOT trying to
help saving lives from a vulnerable user's perspective
and making sure that also occupants in vehicles are safe
but it will actually benefit the entire nation.
- [Narrator] For more information
and to find the publications for this project,
please visit the TxDOT Research Library
at the link shown below.