Austroads: Transport Research and Trends

Austroads has updated the Guide to Road Design Part 6: Roadside Design, Safety and Barriers (AGRD Part 6) introducing new sections on the fundamentals of safety barrier systems and design advice for other road safety devices.

This webinar, presented by Dr Rod Troutbeck and Richard Fanning, covers the new structure of AGRD Part 6 and new information included as part of the current guide update focusing on the following sections:

• Section 4: Treatment Options, including options for consideration for a number of relatively common hazards
• Section 5: Fundamentals of Safety Barrier Systems, including information to assist users to make informed decisions when selecting a barrier system for a particular site
• Section 6: Road Safety Barriers, including design process.

The webinar also provides details and the research background to a number of new concepts and processes that have been included in AGRD Part 6. These include barrier flexibility as a measure of their performance, the use of working width rather than deflection, the need to choose an appropriate containment level, the use of a new concept of the departure points of redirection, the placement of barriers behind kerbs, a revised method to calculate the length of need, the need to install barriers in appropriate soils and the orientation of barriers on superelevated roadways.