Exactly what I was thinking. They have to be shiny though. :cheers:
I prefer the words concrete barrier and guardrail though. Crashbarrier sounds weird to me. Also I've noticed a recent trend with using cable barriers in medians recently and it makes me wonder how well they really work. It looks like an 18-wheeler could easily plow through one of those while it whips excess cable through car windshields seriously injuring other people.
Don't tell me, a branch of my company sells that stuff and everybody stares at me when I say "guardtail" which is -by the way- they name we call them here in Italy.
May I add a few general comments?
a) Steel wire: dunno, looks scary, what if a biker runs into it? Sliced ham?
b) Concrete has some advantages, but need s replacement, since it gets brittle with age, pretty much defeating the purpose of installing a New Jersey. Plus I've noticed that more and more concrete barriers are being replaced with double layer steel barriers. You know the kind that looks like two parallel guardrails connected by horizontal bracings. The 540 km Turin to Venice A4 is an example of steel coming back.
c) I'm a bit surprised by how filmsy most of the guardrails posted here look...most of them would be good for a main throughfare but not for a highway. Mainly the ones between the carriages...it's the fast lane people!
d) The Shining
Metal tends to react with air, Galvanized barriers, mainly where you have metal on metal contact like around nuts and bolts, suffer from zinc oxydation, resulting in a whithish salt soiling the shiny new surface. On time this paves the way to red rust which means corrosion and elements needing to be replaced in order to maintain safety specifications. On the other hand you have the ugly looking Corten steel. I know it look terrible and new Corten barriers look really rusty. This kind of steel reacts with oxygen by creating a thin layer od oxides but the reaction does not go through steel. Corten barriers turn brownish in time and don't look appealing but they maintain excellent mechanical properties through the years, offering low maintenacne costs and consisten safety all the time. A typical example is the A22 Brenner Highway/ Autobahn running by my town. A private toll road run by an international consortium...not exactly the epitome of lack of funding...
