ROAD SAFETY
THE EVOLUTION OF
SAFETY SYSTEMS
WITH ALL STATES AND TERRITORIES NOW MANDATING MASH GUIDELINES FOR COMPLIANCE OF PERMANENT AND TEMPORARY SAFETY BARRIERS, ROADS & INFRASTRUCTURE LOOKS AT HOW THE INDUSTRY HAS ADAPTED TO THE CHANGES. Ingal Civil’s re-designed MashFlex system is 30 to 40 per cent quicker to install than its predecessor.
O
ver the past few years, the eligibility criteria for product submissions to the Austroads Safety Barrier Assessment Panel (ASBAP) have been evolving. In April 2018, ASBAP announced all new submissions were required to meet AASHTO’s Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware (MASH) guidelines, or an equivalent, in line with the Australian and New Zealand Standards 3845 Parts 1 and 2. What followed was a gradual transition of the accepted road safety barrier systems and devices within the Australasian market. The transition began with steel rail barriers and permanent concrete barriers on 31 December 2018, then terminals on 30 June 2019 and wire rope safety barriers and crash cushions on 31 December 2019.
The final set of products to make the change were barrier transitions, temporary barriers and Part 2 products. As of January this year, road authorities across all states and territories had mandated the MASH compliance criteria for road safety barrier systems and devices. Australian company Ingal Civil Products is one manufacturer that has been at the forefront of this transition with the evolution of its temporary and permanent road safety barrier products. The company’s Ezy-Guard Smart System was the first MASH compliant system to be approved in Australia. This was soon followed with the release of other MASHcompliant permanent barrier systems, such as the Ezy-Guard 4 Guardrail Crash Barrier, the ET-SS MASH Guardrail End Terminal,
QuadGuard M10 MASH Crash Cushions and Ingal’s motorcyclist protection equipment, all of which are now compliant with the MASH crash testing protocol. Luke Gallagher, Product Manager at Ingal Civil Products, says the company has since expanded this transition to its temporary safety barrier systems with the introduction of the next generation of work zone crash cushions, the MASH TL3 ArmorBuffa. Having successfully rolled out hundreds of kilometres of Flexfence wire rope safety barrier systems to the market for the past 25 years, Ingal Civil upgraded this product a few years ago and replaced it with a MASH complaint version called MashFlex. The efforts to continually improve the product lines can be seen with the recent upgrade to MASH TL4. roadsonline.com.au
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