Passively Safe Lighting Column Involved in Serous Road Accident

Passively Safe Lighting Column Involved in Serous Road Accident

The first incident involving a Kapu High Energy Passively Safe Lighting has been reported by Durham County Council.

The vehicle involved was a small soft top MGF Sports car which skidded off the carriageway and hit a KAPU lighting column at speed but sustained relatively minor damage. What is more remarkable is the fact that the impact was a (drivers) ‘side-on’ collision, theoretically the most dangerous type of impact yet the female driver was uninjured.

The accident happened at approximately 9:20am on 26 August on the A167 in Chester le Street. The road conditions according to the Police were wet with light rain which would have contributed to the skid that saw the vehicle leave the carriageway and impact the lighting column.

The Kapu column from Signpost Solutions was installed in 2008 by Durham County Council Highways as part of the phased ‘making roadsides safer’ campaign. Durham believe that the former trunk road column replacement programme is probably the first scheme in the UK specifically undertaken to meet the latest safety standards.

The project to install the 100 Kapu columns was designed and implemented by Wilf Newell (Street Lighting manager) and Don Waller (Traffic control manager).

Don commented “Obviously we do not wish to have any collisions but now that it has happened and both the column and the NAL electrical safety system have worked as designed it provides the evidence to support our aims to extend the passive safety concept in Durham.

It is excellent news that the driver was not injured which would probably not have been the case if the lighting column had been of traditional steel. This one incident justifies our commitment to passive safety and also give the staff involved a feeling of success and the impetus to make our roads even safer”.

In an unusual development to the incident Durham also managed to interview the driver involved and got her permission to use her comments;

“I can never be able to express my thanks to the people who have developed these new systems and the council for using them which allowed me to walk away uninjured from this crash and I hope that my experience will encourage more of these lighting columns to be used to protect other people who may have a crash in the future – I just feel so lucky to be alive!”