Abstract:
The goal of this paper is to stimulate discussion on comparing the NCHRP Report 350: "Recommended Procedures for the Safety Performance Evaluation of Highway Features" and AASHTO’s "Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware" (MASH) standards to the European Normative (EN) 1317 standard with the desire that such discussions lead to a formal comparison. Both EN 1317 and NCHRP 350–MASH are well-designed regulations that have been effective in stimulating the development of roadside safety products. The place to begin when attempting to analyze and compare these three standards is with energy, since the business of roadside safety is a business of energy management. A complete comparison of the standards, however, should take into consideration more that just the impact energies. A review of the vehicle types, centers of gravity, measurement techniques, vehicle occupant risk, and many other aspects of crash testing would be necessary for a complete comparison of the standards. To keep this paper brief, only the heavy vehicle tests for longitudinal barriers and the highest class of end terminals are reviewed.
