What is passive safety?

Passive safety is the concept of designing as safe a roadside environment as possible in order to reduce the severity of collisions involving errant vehicles. Approximately one in five of all fatal or serious injuries are associated with an unforgiving roadside environment.

Passively safe street furniture is specifically designed, and proven through testing, to provide less resistance during impact and avoid sudden decelerations which might result in injury to vehicle occupants. The layout of a road, its associated facilities and features and its state of maintenance/repair can all be contributory to the occurrence and severity of a road traffic collision. The performance of a highway authority responsible for the road where a collision has taken place is a vital consideration during such investigations.

There are in place nowadays guidelines provide advice for the adoption and selection of the appropriate type of passively safe sign- posts, lighting columns, traffic signal poles, bollards and other passively safe street furniture for all rural and urban roads. The guidelines are advisory and we advise highway authorities to take a conscience decision on whether to adopt them in full or in part. There is very much in place a belief that there are no safety risks but only safety benefits if they are adopted. Advice is given on prioritising passive safety to those roads where it is likely to offer the greatest benefit.

It is becoming increasingly clear that using passively safe signposts and lighting columns saves lives on trunk roads and this benefit is transferable to their broader use outside the trunk road network. Passively safe street furniture can significantly reduce deaths and serious injuries on these roads. It should be noted while speed affects the severity of accidents the statistics demonstrate serious injury casualties and deaths with street furniture frequently occur in both urban areas and on rural roads.