Road Safety Problems Documented On April 23, 2012 Posting Date: 23 April 2012 This is a chronicle of a single morning's drive through the rural outskirts of London, Ontario, Canada, and the safety-related roadway problems that were found. There was no purposeful intent on our part to search out these problems but they just happened to reveal themselves during our travel. First, below is an old guard rail system at a small bridge of a busy highway. Do you see anything wrong? Let us take a closer look at that rusted rail as noted on the following page. The bottom of the rail is touching the ground. Is this how a guard rail is supposed to be positioned? In the bottom photos of the following page we placed our tape measure next to the rail to measure its height at its front and rear surfaces. You can see that the rail is barely a foot tall (30 centimetres).
Remember, such a rail system is designed to deflect vehicles away from the gorge below. It is meant to arrest the vehicle's centre-of-gravity so it must be tall enough. But clearly, one does not need to be any kind of expert to recognize that this is a problem. It has been known for many years that the guard rail should be anchored to the end of the concrete bridge abutment. Why? Because, when the rail is pushed away by the striking vehicle then the vehicle will be directed into the stiff abutment if is not anchored. So let us see how this guard rail is anchored, as noted below. It looks like there are some anchorage bolts that pass through the anchorage plate of the rail and then they appear to go into the concrete of the abutment - or do they? Let's take a closer look as per the photos on the following page. Well, certainly the intent was there, many years ago, when the guard rail was first installed, to have it anchored to the concrete abutment, but that is no longer the case. The top bolt is just barely holding into the concrete while the bottom bolt is completely separated. Would this anchor hold back a typical passenger car from striking the concrete abutment? Again, it does not take an expert to recognize that there is a problem here.
Let us move on to something new. Our laws allow persons to get away with unsafe road conditions provided that they place a warning to the user of a roadway that they enter at their own risk. Below is an example of a warning sign supposedly informing the public of a danger. The bottom photo shows where this sign is located. Now if we panned over to the left a little we might see something that we should be concerned about, as shown at the top of the following page.
Can you see it? Not really. And this is daylight. What if this was night-time? The overhead lighting on the left is lighting up a parking lot and not the street where the problem exists. Let's take a closer look as per the photo below. It's a pre-cast temporary concrete barrier.
In fact, if you get closer and look at it sideways, you see that it is two concrete barriers side-by-side, as shown below. Below is a view of the barriers from the direction that traffic would be approaching them.
Notice how the shade of the barrier is similar to that of the road surface behind it. Again, think about this being at night time and there is no overhead lighting and you are driving a small sub-compact car or a motorcycle. Why is this concrete barrier at this location? Generally, it would be placed to keep traffic away from something more dangerous on the other side, such as a steep cliff. But there is nothing on the other side, just more road surface. What would happen if a small subcompact car struck this barrier at 60 km/h? Or what if a motorcycle struck it at the same speed? Yet it exists. Let us move on to something new. Below we have a rural roadway with some pleasant rolling vertical alignment - well, let us just say that it's hilly. As a driver approaching this area you want to be appraised of things that may exist on the roadway just beyond the first rise because you cannot see the surface. There are yellow warning signs placed on our roadsides to warn of potential dangers. If you look closely in the above photo you might be able to see one of these signs - or perhaps not. We get a closer look in the photo on the following page.
Yes, there is a warning sign, but what does it say? Again, imagine it is night-time and you are travelling at highway speed. Will you be able to read the sign? Let's look closer. The meaning is still fuzzy? Ok, maybe we can now reveal the sign.
Hidden driveway, ah, or should it say "Hidden Sign"? Why is the sign hidden? Let us look at it from the other side, as shown below.
Did this sign become non-vertical over-night? No, it has likely developed this tilt over time; lots of time. Enough time that, if someone were checking the roadway for any problems its angle would become apparent well before it got to this condition. So this is an obvious problem, but what about something more subtle as shown below. Here we have another, non-vertical "Hidden Driveway" sign, but there is no pole in front of it. Is this a problem? The photos on the following page provide some additional views of the sign for your evaluation. In particular, the photo at the bottom of the page shows its angle from a side view across the road. So not only is it tilted away from the road but it is also tilted backwards. Is this a problem? Imagine night-time again, or a foggy night. There is retro-reflective material on these signs so they can be seen better when the headlights of vehicles shine on them. Granted the reflection is still reasonable at substantial angles but when the sign has an angle like this its visibility in poor driving conditions deteriorates and this might be sufficient to cause the driver not to detect the sign or not to detect it early enough.
As a final note, this day, April 23rd, 2012, was exceptionally windy in Southern Ontario, and the spring has been exceptionally dry. As construction crews begin their digging to develop new residential subdivisions on the outskirts of the cities, their heavy trucks stir up the dry soil as they pull in and out of their construction locations as shown below.
On most days this construction activity would not be a noticeable problem. But along comes a strong gust of wind and you get the feeling you are in a localized Sahara, as shown below. And when you get caught in the middle of one of these dust clouds it becomes almost impossible to see ahead - but only for a very short time and distance. A crash occurs
during one of these dust ups and someone dies. Unless there are witnesses no one knows why. These are just some of the safety issues that we noted in short time of driving in the rural outskirts of London, Ontario, Canada. Most of the problems I have noted were fully capable of being detected because they were obvious and the problems have likely existed for a long time. Some, like the sand cloud, are short-lived and exceptional. But these problems are not being detected, or if they are, they are not being dealt with properly by those whose responsibility it is to make our roads safe. Gorski Consulting London, Ontario, Canada Copyright Gorski Consulting, All rights reserved