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Safety Performance Evaluation of Minnesota's Aluminum Type III Barricades

REPORT NUMBER

TRP-03-101-00

AUTHORS

Karla Lechtenberg (Polivka), Ronald Faller, Jim Holloway, John Rohde, Dean Sicking

PUBLICATION DATE

2000-10-19

ABSTRACT

A wide variety of traffic controlling devices are used in work zones, some of which are not normally found on the roadside or in the traveled way outside of the work zones. These devices are used to enhance the safety of the work zones by controlling the traffic through these areas. Due to the placement of the traffic control devices, the devices themselves may be potentially hazardous to both the workers and errant vehicles. The impact performance of many work-zone traffic control devices is mainly unknown and to to date limited crash testing has been conducted, under the criteria of National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report No. 350, Recommended Procedures for the Safety Performance Evaluation of Highway Features. The objective of the study was to evaluate the safety performance of existing aluminum type III barricade systems through full-scale crash testing. A total of four full-scale crash tests were conducted on type III barricades to determine their safety performance according to the Test Level 3 (TL-3) criteria set forth in the NCHRP Report No. 350. All of the impacts on the barricade systems resulted in acceptable safety performances. Following the analysis of the crash tests and test results from other barricade systems resulted in acceptable safety performances. Following the analysis of the crash tests and test results from other testing programs, it was found that slight variations in design features of the work-zone traffic control devices can lead to very different performance results. Therefore, extreme care should be taken in applying results of one work-zone traffic control device crash test to another similar-work-zone traffic control devices with slight variations. The results of the crash tests were documented, and conclusions and recommendations pertaining to the safety performance of the existing work-zone traffic control devices were made.