These guidelines are to assist Highway Authorities in employing passive safety to help make their roads safer. They make the case for passive safety, advise on how to employ passively safe street furniture and discuss targeting scarce resources to most benefit in safety and economic terms. They also explore measures to reduce casualties from hitting trees. Advice has been provided in the past for Trunk roads in TA89/04 and TA89/05 but these new guidelines target local authority roads where most ‘Killed and Serious Injured’ accidents occur.
With any new development there will be concerns about risk. With passive safety this has centered on the possibility of frangible posts hitting pedestrians or causing other secondary accidents. Whilst this aspect is explored in these guidelines, the real risk is from impacts with conventional street furniture and above all trees, as is so clearly demonstrated in the relevant road casualty statistics.