Another success story for the installers of the wire barriers ?

Is this another " success " ? story for the instigators for the installation
of the wire barriers at the edge of hundreds of kilometres of Victorian
roads ?

Where there is something brought up about the danger of anything where
anyone is in danger, there is immediate outcry from the public to get it
stopped, but this idiocy of wire barriers, has never been properly presented
as a danger to motorcyclists.

True that not all points of the incident has been presented, such as what
the neck injury was and how it occurred, but with previous posts being about
flexible barriers, isn't there a solution they can come up with to stop
death or serious injury caused by the wire barriers?

On many trips and seeing hundreds of kilometres of roads with wire barriers
along the sides of the roads, it appears quite plain, that the wire barriers
are put there to protect the fauna of the area and not to save any lives.

Probably another reason for the wire barriers, is so that if any vehicle
runs off the road where there is no wire barrier or any other barrier to
save the trees and bushes, it may take more than an hour to extract the
vehicle from these bushes and after it is removed, there is an ugly hole
where the offending vehicle has damaged the precious fauna.

The high cost of vehicle registration is supposed to go toward the cost of
road safety preventative measures, but, all that appears to be done, is more
wire rope barriers and speed cameras to be stuck in inappropriate places, in
contravention to their own rules of putting them in places where there has
been a high number of crashes or deaths.

How many deaths had occurred along the new Western Ringroad ( Melbourne )
before they placed their speed cameras hidden from view under the overpass?

I think they were up before the road was opened, meaning that they were
specifically for revenue raising and not safety cameras, as they claim.

 

On Mon, 18 Apr 2011 08:06:29 +1000, George W Frost wrote:

There is an element of altruism and good intentions of course. With
wire rope "safety" barriers the idea is to keep the vehicle on the
road whilst slowing it down as the bits come off. Then there's the
environmental feel good associated with re-using wire rope that has
passed its use-by date in the mines of the world.
Of course there is no excuse for these abominations whatever the good
intention, but there you go.
Speed cameras are similarly well intended, even though Blind Freddy
knows that prevalence breeds contempt, with an effect opposite that
intended.

 

http://www.autotrader.co.uk/EDITORIAL/BIKES/news/41596.html

ShyBiker

There you go!

 

To be fair, in almost all circumstances, the motorcyclist has already
crashed or is about to crash by the time the barrier has any part in
their fate, so the barriers aren't all that blameful. There'll never be
a good solution to the problem of vehicles leaving their lane, so better
to focus attention on not leaving the lane, then whatever is located
adjacent to the lane loses relevance. I know plenty of locations where
poles/trees other roadside furniture poses a much greater danger to
riders, but these don't seem to be on any motorcyclist's bitch-lists.

Nev..

 

More than likely not Nev, but the wire barriers are more noticeable than
trees and take up a lot more space.

 

In aus.motorcycles on Mon, 18 Apr 2011 18:03:34 +1000

I think that's because they are "usual". Always been there.

Wire rope is new and looks nasty.

As far as I'm aware despite the "Cheese cutter" name, fatalities
caused by wire rope fencing have been because riders hit the poles and
were staked/broken by them, not cut by the ropes.

Mind you, trees and street furniture look "missable" whereas a
continuous barrier doesn't. Armco and concrete don't look as
frightening as wire rope despite the fact that both will do you very
serious damage.

Like much road safety, perceptions and instinct are a big part of
people's reactions, and are often wrong.

Zebee

 

I have watched video footage of how wire rope barriers stop vehicles from
crossing into the oncoming lanes and they look very efficient in doing that
job with cars etc, you could say that the barrier gives the motorist a
second chance after they have made a mistake, unfortunately when
Motorcyclists are making similar mistakes, they invariably made to pay with
their lives.
If it were the other way around, i.e. car drivers in the same situation
there would be all kinds of protests against them.
This HAS to be some sort of "O.H.&S." or "Fit for purpose" issue? surely?

Four generation Motorcyclist.

 

Looking at the Victorian stats for accidents in the 5 years 2005-2009,
there were about 214 motorcycle fatalities. In 10 reports they are
reported to have hit a guard rail (type of guard rail unspecified). In
4 of those 10 cases they are also reported to have hit another object,
tree, power pole, traffic sign, embankment).

That leaves 6 fatal accidents where the only object hit was a guard rail
(type of guard rail unspecified). No indication of how many of those
were WRB.

Just for comparative purposes. During the same period,
3 motorcyclists died after hitting a building,
3 after hitting an animal (1 roo, 1 cow, 1 unidentified)
6 after hitting a fence,
8 after hitting an embankment,
10 after hitting a traffic sign,
13 after hitting a power pole,
25 died after hitting a tree,
and bout 150 odd after colliding with another vehicle.

Here's a link to an extract from a peer reviewed study of motorcycle
fatalities involving safety barrier collisions.
http://www.rsconference.com/pdf/RS094029.PDF
It examined accident reports Australia wide in the years 2001-2006 and
found that from a total of 67 motorcycle fatalities involving hitting a
guard rail or barrier of some type, 4 involved WRB.

Nev..

 

Agreed, the standards say the diameter of the cable must be at least
19mm so the rider cannot be cut -- before the standards wee
introduced the cables were thinner.

Zebee I have a question for you.

Imagine you HAD to have a crash on the freeway at 70 kph (either you
had to run off the freeway upright, or drop the bike and slide off the
freeway head first), but you had a choice between, going left and
going right.
On your left there are trees with 20cm diameter trunks spaced at one
tree every 20m (this is the kind of thing barriers are put up to
protect).
On your right the is, you guessed it, a solid 5km stretch of WRB
(beyond it is 30m wide median strip, it looks smooth and grassy with
some occasional bushes and then the other carriageway).
My question is: left or right?

Now ask yourself this: would your answer change if a psychopathic
Vietnam war veteran (http://www.nedonthenet.com/jjarrett.jpg) had
parked his ute on a shell midden 750m away on the LEFT side, and there
was a 20% he could hit you with a round from his high-powered hunting
rifle before you could get behind a tree... and safety? If you
answered 'left' for all questions then that's a good indicator for
just how dangerous 'right' is.

Getting close to the weekend now...

 

The problem with contrived dilemma, is that they are contrived. ie, you
have to invent an unreasonable situation (such as that above) in order
to make your point, which then makes a point of it's own. You're never
going to HAVE TO crash on a freeway and will never have a choice in
which direction you go, well you might, but you almost certainly won't
know about it in time to make that decision, and if you did you will
probably always choose option C "something else entirely to avoid
crashing", which you conveniently failed to give as an option.

The one benefit that I have seen which WRB does have over other types of
barriers, is that it usually only absorbs a single impact. That is, if
you're following your bike off the road and you're the second thing to
hit the posts, there's a good chance that the posts will have been
removed by your bike before you get there. Alternatives like armco and
trees on the other hand, will probably still be there waiting for you
just just as much resistant force as they had before the first impact.

Nev..

 

OK. I did exaggerate with the deranged vet, but it's not really
contrived. Which would you prefer to slide into at over 60kph, a row
of trees where there is a certain probability, p, of hitting a tree
and serious injury (and 1-p chance of missing) or a continuous length
of barrier with a probability of hitting it = 1. I see both
situations every day. All you need is a sideways shunt from a car.
I've seen that too.

I can't believe you would really wish for the barrier, which is what
you appear to be saying... but it's a good point about the barrier
being damaged by the bike IF you are sliding on the same line as the
bike (I have seen a lot of riders come off on race tracks and
generally the bike and rider go on separate paths). Supposing you do
go on the same line, this looks more enticing than a tree:
http://www.mravic.org.au/forum/modules/myalbum/photo.php?lid=1751.
That was done by a large truck, I can't find a picture of the damage
caused by a motorcycle impact.

 

But even Zebee says that barriers are often put up because of thing
like "trees and street furniture"! No. It was a simple enough
question. Not contrived. Just 'left' or 'right'. I find it very
telling that you evade answering the question.

That has been very clearly indicated to me.

It's the *ONLY* example to show. You were the one that produced this
'brilliant' argument that the bike would flatten the posts ahead of
the rider. I don't know where you got that fantastic idea from, a
steel saleman at a road safety conference I expect ;-)

ALL I DID, after you raised the notion that "there's a good chance
that the posts will have been removed by your bike" was to go to
Google pictures and try to find an picture of post damage due to a
bike impact. Go on, try yourself. If there's a "good chance" then
probably it has happened somewhere in the world in the last decade and
someone has taken a photograph of it BUT NO! Actually when I search I
can only find a photo of scrape marks on the ashphalt and a bunch of
flowers tie-warpped to the undamaged barrier.

I won't be upset if you admit that there is no evidence to support the
assertion "there's a good chance that the posts will have been removed
by your bike". My guess is you will refuse to do that at any cost.

VTR250

 

Well if you've already done the research not much point me redoubling
your effort, although discovering a lack of photographs of a particular
thing on the internet only proves that there is a lack of photographs on
the internet. A google images search also finds no photos of God on the
internet, but I'm not sure either the sceptics or the believers would
consider that to be credible evidence supporting either case.

The statistics still shows that WRB are well down on the list of dangers
for motorcyclists, and they're only on the list of dangers to
motorcyclists who've already crashed, so if you do whatever you can
while you're riding to stay off the list of motorcyclists who have
already crashed, you can probably do navigate yourself around most of
the other fixed obstacles you may encounter not on the road. In
reality, the fixed obstacles off the road are the least of your worries
when the roads are full of moving obstacles.

Nev..

 

"VTR250" wrote

Not a fair question. Suppose there is a minefield on the left with a
barrier of spiked concrete blocks on the right. You see a gap in the
blocks of a couple of metres which you might be able to slide into,
but then you're in the minefield. You also know there are gaps between
the mines and you can see the body of a Vietnam Vet who was trying to
hide in there. On the left there is unbroken WRB. Which side would you
aim for?

I'll take Nev's option C, and try and stay aware enough to avoid the
situation in the first place.

Now come up with an even more ridiculous scenario.

Theo

 

"Theo Bekkers" wrote in message

"VTR250" wrote

Not a fair question. Suppose there is a minefield on the right with a
barrier of spiked concrete blocks on the right. You see a gap in the
blocks of a couple of metres which you might be able to slide into,
but then you're in the minefield. You also know there are gaps between
the mines and you can see the body of a Vietnam Vet who was trying to
hide in there. On the left there is unbroken WRB. Which side would you
aim for?

I'll take Nev's option C, and try and stay aware enough to avoid the
situation in the first place.

Now come up with an even more ridiculous scenario.

Theo

 

WRB World Reference Base
**** WRB War Refugee Board
*** WRB Web Request Broker
*** WRB Weather-Resistant-Barrier (Exterior Window, Door and Skylight
installation)
*** WRB World Rally Blue (Subaru car color)
** WRB Wissenschaftliche Regionalbibliothek (German: Scientific Regional
Library; Germany)
** WRB Work Roll Bending (mills)
* WRB Warranty Review Board
* WRB Water Resistant Board (construction)
Note: We have 44 other definitions for WRB in our Acronym Attic

 

Nev.. wrote...

And in this case, as reported over on Netrider, it appears that the rider may
have hit a farm fence, which, coincidentally, is also made of wires...

Speaking of road side barriers, on a trip to Walhalla last week we spotted
workers installing secondary railings on existing armco. So, now, a rider will
merely slam into it, rather than be either (a) wedged underneath the armco
railing, or (b) hit the post that supports it.

I prefer the product "Mototub" which looks like pliable large poly pipe that
offers more give than a solid length of steel or posts...

 

LOL The post was submitted just before I slunk off for the weekend.
You have taken it in the sense it was intended.