Flexible friends

The new signs look the same but collapse on impact

Bendy road signs sound like something out of Alice in Wonderland. But highway bosses have a sensible explanation for their new flexible friends.

Their function is to help drivers but road signs have had a hard time of late.

First they came under fire from the Campaign to Protect Rural England for "cluttering up the streets".

Now the Highways Agency says road signs need to be replaced by bendy ones because they're injuring motorists who collide with them.

In 2002 there were 39 people killed hitting signs or traffic signals, 294 were seriously injured and 1167 were slightly injured on all the UK's roads.

Anything that improves the potential of people surviving a crash has to be welcomed Caroline Chisholm Brake

Usually there are safety barriers erected at the side of the road if the sign is deemed at risk, so the injuries are sustained hitting the barrier. There were 50 such fatalities in 2002.

But the new "passive safe signposts", which are available for motorways and trunk roads across the UK, bend or break when hit. They are equipped with a hinge at their feet, which makes them collapse at the point of impact.

They cause less injury to motorists and less damage to vehicles, says the agency, and tests showed they cause less injury than the safety barriers.

Ginny Clarke, the agency's director of safety standards and research directorate, says: "The signs are being increasingly used nationally as a replacement when damage occurs to existing ones. Passively Safe Signposts are being encouraged as the preferred choice for a replacement sign."

Some local authorities are using these signposts on urban roads, and the Highways Agency hopes to extend their use to traffic lights and street lights.

Cheaper option

Caroline Chisholm of the road safety charity Brake says: "Anything that improves the potential of people surviving a crash has to be welcomed and what we are seeing here is a lot of forward thinking on the part of the Department for Transport."

The average life of a road sign is 10-12 years, so over the next decade most will be replaced. They are cheaper than a steel one because there is no need to put a safety barrier around them, and easier to replace.

In Norway there are about 10,000 such signs and there has never been a death or serious injury from hitting one.

A seminar in June hosted by Mott MacDonald aims to spread the principles of passive road safety to police, local authorities and solicitors.

The firm's head of traffic management, Andrew Pledge, says soon everything put by the side of the road will be made safe, such as electrical cabinets which can instead be put underground.