ArcelorMittal Ostrava has developed special safety barriers that help protect motorcyclists better in the event of an accident. The new steel barrier has now been installed for the first time at a test area in the Czech municipality of Šebrov, Blansko district. With a lower guard strip compared with traditional barriers, the new barriers are the first to be certified against ‘under-riding’ – a major cause of injuries and fatalities among motorcyclists involved in road accidents.
ArcelorMittal Ostrava has developed, tested and installed the safety barriers, called JSAM-M/H1, free of charge. The new safety barriers were developed following research and development activities carried out to develop the so-called ‘smart road restraint system’, which uses sensors to record accidents – a project which has received funding from the EU. ArcelorMittal Ostrava was actively involved in the development of this system, and built on this work to produce the new safety barrier in cooperation with the University of Zaragoza, Spain.
Development of the new restraint system took two months at ArcelorMittal Ostrava, and was followed by successful crash tests and certification by the Czech Republic’s Directorate of Roads and Highways and the Ministry of Transport.