Skip to main content

More flexible workzone protection

Impact protection vehicles, often the only form of protection between workers and traffic in many road maintenance and repair operations, are designed to arrest an errant car or truck. Truck-mounted attenuators have been used for many years, but as Brent Kulp of Traffix Devices points out, advances in trailer attenuators, such as on his company's Scorpion, provide the same protection, at lower cost but with much greater flexibility. He points to the Scorpion's unique curved design, which not only redirects
January 31, 2012 Read time: 1 min
Impact protection vehicles, often the only form of protection between workers and traffic in many road maintenance and repair operations, are designed to arrest an errant car or truck. Truck-mounted attenuators have been used for many years, but as Brent Kulp of 1918 Traffix Devices points out, advances in trailer attenuators, such as on his company's Scorpion, provide the same protection, at lower cost but with much greater flexibility. He points to the Scorpion's unique curved design, which not only redirects side impacts away from exposed corners of the truck but enables the device to crush in stages upon impact, thereby reducing repair costs.

 "Trailers have been gaining in popularity over the last few years due in part to their portability and not having to have a dedicated crash truck in an agency's vehicle fleet," Kulp says.

Related Content

  • German authorities use CB-radio message to reduce accidents in roadworks
    April 8, 2014
    Citizen Band radio is proving useful to prevent accidents in Germany’s roadworks. In common with other German Länder (federal regions) with large volumes of commercial vehicles using their trunk road networks, Bavaria had been experiencing high levels of road traffic accidents (RTAs) involving heavy trucks in the vicinity of minor motorway maintenance sites. This was despite the extensive visual warning regulations published in the German federal road safety audit (RSA) guidelines for the protection of site
  • The case for integrating urban traffic control and parking
    February 3, 2012
    Although urban traffic control and parking management are inextricably linked in so many ways, there remain fundamental differences which undermine closer integration. Car parking guidance systems can have a significant, positive impact on congestion in town and city centres, however conflicting business models still stand in the way of the more profound integration of car parking management and Urban Traffic Control (UTC) systems.
  • ‘Free’ power for signs, shelters and so much more
    March 17, 2016
    David Crawford looks at the sunny side of the street. Solar power has been relatively slow in entering the transport sector, but a current blossoming of activity bodes well for the large-scale harnessing of an alternative energy that is zero-emission at source and, in practical terms, infinitely renewable. Traffic management and traveller information systems, and actual vehicles, are all emerging as areas for deployment. Meanwhile roads themselves are being viewed as new-style, fossil fuel-free ‘power stati
  • Options abound for road weather sensing
    September 6, 2017
    Meteorological organisations invest millions in super-computers to crunch data for ever-more accurate forecasts but inherent unpredictability means that other methods of alerting drivers and road authorities to fast-changing weather and highway conditions are essential. For years, static weather sensors to measure factors such as surface water, ice or high roadway temperatures have been embedded in highways to provide such data. But that is changing.