Most people take the partitions that divide the traffic on U.S. highways for granted. But these seemingly simple barriers are actually deceptively sophisticated: Their designs have been well-tested and tweaked to ensure driver safety on both sides of the road in the […]
Here is an article that answers many people\’s question… Why are concrete barriers often referred to as \”Jersey Barriers\”?
Concrete road barriers were first used in California in 1946; they replaced the standard (but weak) wood beam guardrails on the treacherous Grapevine section of the state’s Ridge Route highway—the home of the original “Dead Man’s Curve”—where the roads had a 6 percent downgrade that led to many head-on collisions. Then, in 1949, the state of New Jersey adopted comparable concrete structures and installed preventative parabolic median barriers on the Jugtown Mountain section of US Route 22 in Hunterdon County, which had a similarly hazardous downgrade to the Ridge Route highway.
