Bolster Barrier (BOLER): A New Device to Improve Safety of Accidents

Guardrail is the most important road furniture to prevent vehicles from crashing to the shoulder of the road or into the opposite lane. It also protect the objects at the roadside and prevent vehicles from entering into dangerous areas such a ravine or river. Performance of guardrail is not only influenced its design, but also the design of the vehicle. Fundamental design of guardrails is aimed to reduce serious effects to vehicles and users in the event of an accident. One of the guardrail impact devices is Bolster Barrier (BOLER) that enhances the existing W-shape guardrails. It is intended to reduce the accident impact between road users and the guardrails themselves. Usually, the application of BOLER is focused at critical areas where it will reduce the numbers of serious injuries and fatalities in an accident. To test the performance of the BOLER, it was placed through an impact test known as dolly test at MIROS Lab, Provisional Crase Crash Centre (PC3) of Ayer Molek, Melaka. The test measured the dolly’s velocity, w-beam guardrail bar’s deformation and the overall force overtime trace. Results for Standard W-beam guardrail with BOLER recorded a lower peak force (47.6kN versus 51.5kN) and a delayed time to reach peak force by 11.4 milliseconds as compared to guardrail without BOLER. The delay of 11.4 milliseconds creates a safe zone for an airbag to fully inflate before the full impact between road users and the guardrails occurs.