Over recent years driver and passenger serious injuries and fatalities arising from vehicles colliding with street furniture and objects has been steadily increasing. This has prompted the introduction of EN12767 annex which encourages road designers to consider carefully the type and location of Columns/Street Furniture they are placing near to the carriageway.

Simplifying the advice note, the following points should be considered by anyone designing new roads:

• Any traditional steel tube with a diameter of over 89mm, and with a wall thickness of 3.2mm or more is not deemed passively safe and should therefore be protected by crash barriers.

• There are three passively safe crash-test result classifications – High Energy (HE), Low Energy (LE) and No Energy (NE). Designers must consider which classification is most suitable for the road they are designing.

• Columns which have been formally crash tested, third party verified, and received a passively safe classification (NE, LE or HE) can be installed without the need for expensive crash barrier protection.

• All illuminated passively safe columns / street furniture must have the ability to disconnect the electricity supply completely within 0.4 seconds of vehicle impact. This is to ensure any potentially exposed cables do not cause vehicle fires or passenger electrocution.

NAL Ltd have designed and manufactured a range of products which assist designers who are implementing EN12767 into road schemes.