You have certainly seen metal and concrete barriers as a means for directing traffic or protecting certain areas for hundreds of times. However, did you also know that there are water filled barriers which are becoming a trend, and a particularly good replacement for the former? They are made out of sturdy UV stabilized polythene. What’s great about them is that they are quite light, and therefore pretty easy to carry around and attach to each other. Once you fill them with water, they have the necessary weight, toughness, and stability that can prevent impact and misplacement.
This is why the use of water filled barriers is on the rise, especially when it comes to traffic. In this article, we are going to discuss the ways that they can be used in order to improve public safety.
Road closures
When road or other construction works are in progress, it is, of course, crucial that you use some kind of barriers to close the area off and control the traffic when the path is still supposed to remain open for vehicles. The problem arises with the use of metal and concrete barriers, because they are often dangerous not only for cars, but also for cyclists, motorists, pedestrians, and construction workers themselves. In fact, mortality rates have shown a lot of cases where such a barrier has been a cause of death or injury due to heavy impact.
This is where water filled barriers present a huge difference. You place them around the area so that if anything that hits them suffers a significantly weaker impact, and therefore has a much greater chance to come out of the whole ordeal unharmed.
No gaps in terms of safety measures
As we have previously discussed, concrete barriers are quite risky to use, so a lot of contractor companies tend to use traffic cones or drums to separate particular areas so that traffic is properly controlled. What is important to mention is that this solution is risky, because the space between cones can enable someone to pass through by accident (or even on purpose), because what we have here is pretty much a virtual barrier instead of a real and stable one.
By connecting water filled barriers, you can come up with a complete barricade that doesn’t allow any space in between. This way you will make sure that both sides – the construction workers and people on the “outside” – are kept safe properly. What is also great about such barriers is that they often include plugs that prevent tampering, so no one can vandalize or steal them, which is something that is a lot more common for traffic cones.
Of course, as opposed to drums and cones, water filled barriers are much more stable in terms of not getting pushed out of place or damaged by any external factor. They are very stable when it comes to impact on their own, while when they are connected, they are perfect for making sure that the designated direction isn’t affected.
Great visual impact
Another very important thing on the road is that the sign that is meant to tell someone that they should find a way around a particular area where certain work is being done is highly visible, so that there is very little possibility that someone will mistake it for something else. Water filled barriers are a great solution in this case as well, as they can in “alarming” colors – red, orange, and white. Therefore, a driver or a motorist that is coming towards them can easily spot them from a proper distance, and act according to the situation on time.
This is crucial for certain areas where people don’t really expect to come across barriers. In the UK, for example, the Road Safety Foundation has determined that single carriage A roads are 7 times more of a liability than the motorways. Therefore, these areas simply need to be properly fortified so that the risk of an accident happening is decreased to the minimum. So, a water filled barrier that is properly colored will surely be something that any driver will notice in contrast with the road, and therefore be able to react.
There is a wide variety of places where you can find water barriers for sale. So, if you are, for example, an owner of a construction company, it would be an extremely smart choice to invest in such a safety measure, as you want to do your best to make sure that everyone in and around your construction site is safe.
In summation
Water filled barriers are an excellent replacement for metal and concrete barriers because they can stand much more impact, and present a lot safer solution. You can use them for traffic diversion and road closures of any kind, or to surround a construction area so that everyone inside and outside remains safe during the works.