13/08/2012

Is this Britain’s Toughest Bollard?

A Night Owl, retroreflective, self-righting bollard from Leafield Environmental is vying for the title “Toughest Bollard in Britain”.

According to members of the Highway Engineering team of Gateshead Council’s Transport Strategy Service, the bollard, situated at a former accident black spot near Birtley, has been nudged, whacked or run over virtually every day for over 12 months and is still standing and performing its duty.

The ‘T’ junction, situated on a virtually blind bend in the road, was notorious for collisions as vehicles ‘cut the corner’ despite the give way warning signs and associated road markings. In an attempt to prevent this, the Council constructed an island complete with two Night Owl keep-left, bounce-back bollards and the dramatic reduction in collisions would indicate that this was an effective solution.

However, the corner remains ‘tight’ and although drivers are now approaching it with more care, many larger vehicles still cut the corner although not to the same extent as previous and the Night Owl bollard nearest to the junction is the victim.

“The scheme has been a great success in reducing collisions,” said Ian McCran of Gateshead Council, “…and it has proven to us the inherent, outstanding durability of Leafield’s Night Owl sign bollard; so much so that it is now Gateshead’s current preferred choice for keep left self-righting bollards.”

So impressed have the Council been with the performance of the Night Owl that they are about to trial the recently introduced Illuminated Night Owl which is base lit with a high performance LED and is reported to be so energy efficient that it costs less than £4 per annum to operate.