The Brifen Wire Rope Safety Fence recently re-affirmed its effectiveness as a road safety measure. A fully-laiden semi trailer, travelling at least 100kph along the Hume Highway impacted with a Brifen Fence in the early morning hours of Friday September 12, 1997. The fence is believed to have prevented what would have been a horrific accident.
The Brifen fence deflected only 4m and prevented the vehicle from rolling or tipping in spite of its high centre of gravity. It is noteworthy that the vehicle travelled 250m after the initial impact before the brakes were applied.
The semi-trailer involved was a Scania Pan Tech. The section of the Hume Highway was 10km north of Goulbourn. There was no serious injury to the driver and only minimal damage to the semi-trailer. The wire fence effectively prevented the semi-trailer from crossing the narrow median strip into the path of oncoming traffic.
For more information on Brifen fences contact Mr Paul Hansen, Managing Director, LB Wire Ropes, exclusive Australian Distributors of Brifen. Phone: (02) 9361 8833 or Fax: (02) 9688 4503.
If you live in New South Wales near Goulburn you can see the fence for yourself. Queensland has also showed some enthusiasm for the safety fence. In 1997 they introduced this device. If you live in the Brisbane/Gold Coast area you can see the fence on the freeway in the Southern Gold Coast area. Thank you to Reg Flemming for e-mailing me that South Australia also used the fence in 1997 to reduce the road toll. If you live in the Adelaide area you can spot one on the southern side of Burbidge road a short distance before it intersects with Tapleys Hill road. Look out for white fence posts with wire ropes close to the road.
Australia now has the safest cars in the world according to a European expert. This is useful as state governments have relied heavily on new car buying for reducing the road toll.
In South Australia in 1997 new car sales reached a 13 year peak. However, to its credit the South Australian government didn't rely upon this for reducing the road toll but instead began a $12million , 3 year Black Spot programme.
On the topic of new car buying influencing safety, New Zealand researcher Kevyn Miller has been getting interesting results from his research on the impact of new car buying on road deaths. He has e-mailed me a brief outline and sent some graphs from his results by way of e-mail enclosure. I will be able to go into this in more detail when he e-mails me from an e-mail account that accepts replies. So far I have been unable to contact him.
Further, Queensland (who have been able to budget $120 million dollars a year on road works for the last few years just to confuse things) has been fairly prosperous in recent times. Nevertheless their road toll has gone down. This makes me wonder if the safety of modern cars means that increasing prosperity of a State means increased road safety via safer cars these days.