Road safety barriers

Road safety barrier systems are intended to safely redirect the majority of vehicles that unintentionally leave the roadway.

The Austroads Safety Barrier Assessment Panel (ASBAP) assesses the crashworthiness and suitability of tested road safety barrier systems and devices for deployment on roads managed by Australian/New Zealand road agencies in line with AS/NZS 3845.

AS/NZS 3845.1:2015 and AS/NZS 3845.2:2017 identify and outline the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware (MASH) for the purposes of evaluating new safety hardware on the US highways network. AASHTO MASH supersedes the AASHTO National Cooperative Highway Research Project Report 350 (NCHRP350) evaluation.

In line with AS/NZS 3845, ASBAP has updated its product submission criteria and is transitioning the current suite of accepted products.

The Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Logistics (DIPL) is adopting MASH as the nominal standard for road safety barrier systems in line with ASBAP and AS/NZS 3845. Where there are no MASH tested products for a specific application, DIPL will consider NCHRP 350 and European Standard EN1317 tested products.

Going forward, only products that have been Austroads assessed should be installed on the NT Government road network. This applies to all installations including permanent and workzone (temporary).

All accepted systems have “Technical Conditions for Use” outlining the parameters under which the product is accepted for use and should be read in conjunction with the product manual.

Test level (TL) containment comparisons