Lighting offers a crash course in saving

15 April 2009

An investment of £375M to replace the 2.5M lighting columns UK motorists are most likely to crash into with ‘passively safe’ versions would pay for itself in two years, according to TRL.

Research commissioned by the County Surveyors’ Society recommends that passively safe lighting columns – designed to alleviate the severity of collisions – are considered on ‘almost all roads in the UK,’ including on urban single carriageway roads where most collisions occur.

However, TRL cautions that the risks posed by collapsing columns on other road-users such as pedestrians ‘should be assessed and determined for each installation’.

Noting that ‘crash-friendly’ columns are used on roads with 25mph or 30mph limits in the US and Scandinavia, TRL considers that there would also be benefits in introducing them across the UK network, except in 20mph zones or on housing estates.
TRL estimates that replacing the 2.5M columns which are not on those residential roads with the lowest speed limits would reduce the total cost of such collisions from £186M to £23M.

This assumes that the use of columns designed to crumple or collapse when hit by a vehicle would reduce the severity of injuries by one step, with fatal injuries reduced to serious, and serious to slight. It also assumes that the extra cost per column would be £150.

However, TRL notes that the extra initial cost in the rural county of Durham was a ‘much less cost-effective’ £750 per installation, but suggests that this figure included other items, such as improved electrical arrangements.

The issue of passively safe columns endangering pedestrians is considered to have been over-emphasised, according to TRL’s review of the literature. It concludes: ‘Risk depends strongly on the numbers exposed. Since most of the run-off collisions occur at night, there will not be pedestrians in many locations.

‘The errant vehicle itself will often pose the greatest risk to pedestrians’.

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