Guardrail

This protective railing makes lesser dangers for traffic users either on the highway or walkway regardless during a busy period or non-peak hours. Especially at a high-speed route that speeding is very common, it can prevent one side of vehicles from a motorcycle, lorry, trailer, van to consumer cars from crossing to the boundary of other opposite direction. Those victims from the other side are innocent if there is no safety divider to cut the impacts caused by rudeness or unintended accidents by their opponents. It can also act as a warning signal to the sleepy driver during long journey travel or at night. There are always delineator and reflector to be installed with the guardrail for the sake of effect enhancement in term of a safety signal, especially some rural areas without consistent roadside or street lighting pole.

Research has shown that vehicles will be slowed down dramatically when they touch the railing, despite made by steel or other materials. Some guardrail can even bounce the vehicle back from it when they receive an impact, including trucks and heavy vehicle. Guard rail can really help to protect buildings or their features such as steps and reducing the loss of assets to local authorities or corporations. These safety barriers can also put in placed to segregate different pathways for the motorist, bicyclist and pedestrian in addition for separation of contrary directional routes for ordinary four-wheels vehicles. This road infrastructural part and the costs for maintenance are relatively low, while it requires minimum regular upkeep too, making it one of the popular ways to offer protection to citizens.

Although the most common installation of guardrail will be seen during your highway drives because the chances of getting any severe accident are higher there due to the speeding and long journey mode on this type of route. Nevertheless, guardrail can also be installed to mountain and hilly slope that are wavy as well as non-consistent orientation in term of direction and height. Putting aside a mountain of one-way, imaging two-directional routes for mountain or hill for vehicles, the risk is higher as in addition to being paid with attention on your own non-flat roadway, you have to be cautious of the other side too. Guardrail will play its vital role to prevent vehicles from falling down while reducing the impact brought by these drivers, it also acts as an edges reminder to many of them while driving in this dangerous route, especially during darker place without street light.

Furthermore, guardrail can also be installed to hiking route, offshore platform, biking trail, bridge, jungle, territory boundary, water treatment plant, stairway, port, forest, tourism area, special architectural drawing, multi-layer overlapping roads in the city, train railway, petrol station, T-junction, roundabout, night market, residential, commercial and industrial areas. The guardrail has so many applications to safeguard the people and their assets, including vehicles and buildings. Of course, some of the installation or specification used to be known as a handrail, balustrade, banister, bannister or merely rail. Guardrail is mandatory for certain highways implemented by the government in most of the countries; as same as the handrail, many of the designs have to comply with the local safety code set by each authority in the local council according to the speed, traffic intensity, size of routes and more.

Unquestionably, it is still possible to make guardrail using different raw products but the most practical and well-accepted one will be made of steel since it is the strongest among other common materials. Especially those guardrails to be installed on the highway, ramp, hill, bridge where speed and height are main considerations to use steel-based guardrail. Nevertheless, we can use fibreglass or wooden protective crowd barrier as a lighter duty version of guardrail such as controlling the group of people in a stadium, event or open space. On the other hand, when stairways handrail or decorative grille are required, materials that have lower strength such as aluminium can be installed. There are also other possibilities to put on stone, granite, marble, wrought iron, brass and more.

Hot-dip galvanized (HDG) treatment to guardrail steel is very useful since this product needs to be sustainable under hot sun, acid rain, impact and other environmental factors over the years. It can prevent the metal surface from getting corroded because its strength will be losing in term of structural, flexure and other effectiveness. Additionally, there are several guard railing components shall be included when doing buy or specification. These include W-beam guardrail. wire rope guardrail, thrie beam guardrail, post, packer, reflector, delineator, splice bolt with nut, square washer, round washer, buffer return, buffer end, end wing, base plate, handrail pipe, handrail post, flare end, terminal section (left and right) and more. Some guardrail providers will also able to offer bridge parapet handrail, traffic barrier, signboard, medium opening and safety handrail.