What can safety barriers protect against?

Safety barriers for industrial workplaces are designed to withstand impacts from:

• Cars
• Trucks
• Forklift Trucks
• Pallet Trucks
• Other site vehicles

A safety barrier is designed to protect vulnerable objects from unwanted impacts with moving vehicles, however the amount of force a safety barrier can handle varies depending on the type of barrier.

How do you work out the strength of a safety barrier?

Most manufacturers provide an impact rating with their safety barriers. This rating is a number that is measured in joules. When safety barriers are tested, this figure is reached by multiplying the velocity of a vehicle by its weight, while factoring in the angle it impacts the barrier. These ratings offer a guideline for the size of force a safety barrier can withstand.

What can cause a safety barrier to fail?

If an object changes speed or weight, this will affect how successful a safety barrier is at deflecting an impact.

For example:

A safety barrier might be able to withstand the force of a forklift truck provided it weighs 4 tonnes or less and is going at 5mph or less. However, if the driver increases the speed of their vehicle, or there is additional weight on the vehicle, this could cause the safety barrier to fail.

Therefore, it is important that strict rules around vehicles speeds and maximum weights are adhered to on site. This will ensure that safety barriers can work to their optimum specifications.