Speedy pregnant driver flies off bridge hits train

" Harvey noted that this is the third collision this year that involved a car going over the concrete barrier on the Carquinez Bridge. "

Could install a fence? :unsure:
 
Needs a higher barrier but best solution is for people to not drive so fast that they lose control and go over the barrier already there.

Phil
 
I would imagine a semi would go over even more easy.
I have never been a fan of raises roadways, but from a aesthetic perspective not falling off them

The only place we have a raised road are probably the western approach to the great belt bridge, but if you go up and over there you get a soft landing.

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Barriers can't be practically made to prevent every possibility of them not working, and every truck driver knows this (or they should). But they can and should be built to retain smaller vehicles which are not airborne as they reach the barrier, and they can and should also work reasonably well for trucks too.

There's some interesting engineering in modern concrete barriers which isn't as obvious as it may seem, such as their angle to the roadway and whether they have a differently angled base section. Those are tested with every form of impact and are actually more important to vehicle retention than height alone. A tall vertical wall might seem fine, but they will actually cause the front of the car to lift and drag, which causes the rear to lose traction and then you get a violent inline roll-over as the result :eek:That is sometimes seen happening in open-wheel racing even today. The angles are set to not overturn a car impacting the barrier, but instead to 'push' it back onto the roadway even if the car climbs the barrier. How the concrete is reinforced matters too, as some impacts will break the concrete and again standard thought doesn't work with that.

Here in the US these are generically called "Jersey barriers" since they were originally developed and used in the state of New Jersey first, but have been much improved since then with each different design having it's own name. But none are 100% foolproof, and with that SUV's speed and angle of impact only the best barrier design might have given them a chance. While we can't control what might go wrong in driving nor what we might hit, we can and must control our speed to do our part in trying to protect ourselves. Regardless of what signs may say, the best rule is to not drive at a speed higher than you're willing to crash at because that just might happen to you ;)

Phil
 
Here the divider on motorways, aside for many places also being a wide "ditch" in the old days there also was two strong parallel steel cables on poles.
The cable dividers are now gone, so are the dividing ditch as it have been repurposed to add one more lane in each direction as traffic increase.
So the ditch are now just a 1 lane wide open gutter, and we have regular steel "pinball" barriers.
 
Those "Armco" barriers are lethal to motorcyclists when their bike falls with them, which almost always happens when they crash :cry:

Phil
 
Yeah. i have often wondered that seeing them on the outside of nice turns where a motorcyclist might very well challenge his own skill and ability of his motorcycle, that gap below and those non rigid uprights, that just spell pain in my book.
I would rather go skidding strait into a field, or as is often the case here across the ditch lining the road and then into a field.
Mind you a Danish ditch are only 4-5 foot wide at its widest, so not much of a launch ramp if you are already down on the tarmac and skidding along it.
 
I would rather go skidding strait into a field,
Depends what is in the field! I think as long as you hit the barrier at a shallow angle, it is better to have the barrier.

 
Indeed, fortunately Danish fields are far more accommodating, if there is animals on it, it is also not a barbwire fence that keep them inside on the field.
Little ( and larger ) stones do come up out of the ground every year, and the farmers collect them and normally just throw them somewhere on their property.
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A fresh field ready for planting are pretty smooth here, aside for various stone / bronze / iron age burial mounds
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That seems a waste of stones, we always turn them into walls, not good for bikes!
 
Well we use to too, but very long ago, actually i dont know why but in the forest south of my birth town Aarhus there are the remnants of old stone walls here and there, but absolutely no system at all to where they are.
Also by now and so many leaves falling and getting blown up against them to compost there, mush of them are more like a little berm with stones on the top.
In the way way old days the little fields attended by the owners slaves ( Danes ) they might have been split up into little parcels too.

Also the British living fences ( hedges ), are not really used over here aside for maybe a handful of die hard enthusiasts.
Some places you will find grows of trees planted as wind breakers, not least out in the western and northern part of Jutland where wind + sand have been a issue for decades.

My friends house are build by such field stones too, and what ever they have put in to not use as much cement, you need strong stuff to put a screw in his house or make a larger hole.'
Also used for decorative walls around many a old church here.
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No nice cut sandstone for the poor farmers of Denmark,,,, o hell no.
 
Yes even if they was 20 mm or so, motorcyclist getting off bad, no matter what they hit tend to just become a mist of red goo.
Paramedis do reccommend to use proper biking attire, but mostly cuz that make it more easy for them to pick up the pieces.
 
Yes even if they was 20 mm or so, motorcyclist getting off bad, no matter what they hit tend to just become a mist of red goo.
Paramedis do reccommend to use proper biking attire, but mostly cuz that make it more easy for them to pick up the pieces.
Yep, dress for the slide not the ride
 
the wire rope ones are even worse for bikes, they tend to cut people in half
There appears to be zero evidence for that. There is evidence that motorcyclists feel less safe with rope barriers and so ride more carefully.

Small reductions in speed can make a big difference to the injuries, but motorcyclists like to go fast!
 
well we've head some people decapitated here from the wire rope fences, they'd tend to disagree I expect
A google resulted in 1 Australian being almost decapitated:

But for wire barriers it appears that stories of wire barrier decapitation are fake news:
“It is not wire rope barriers that are killing or can potentially kill motorcyclists. It is alcohol, drugs, speed and not abiding by traffic laws that are resulting in motorcyclists being killed on Australia’s roads. Let’s make that very clear please,” Prof Grzebieta says.

Riders will normally either go over the top of the barrier leaving the bike behind so that the bike can't injure them, or go underneath, in which case the main danger is from hitting the posts, but the risk of that is not much higher than with metal barriers which also have posts.

Since wire barriers are significantly safer for the majority of road users, it would be more reasonable for the motorcyclists to take a bit more care in avoiding them than to remove them due to conspiracy theories and put the majority of road users genuinely in more danger.
 
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