Lighting Columns and Sign Posts

Background

It is estimated that there are over 6.5 million street lights and 4 million signposts in the UK, which are predominantly manufactured in steel. Due to a combination of road salts, ground conditions and dog urine, the columns and posts are prone to corrosion, which can limit their life to 20-30 years.

In addition, there are 100 deaths and 3,000 injuries in the UK each year involving vehicles colliding with steel or concrete posts and columns. In order to reduce the number of deaths and injuries across Europe, the EC have introduced a new directive, EN12767, which specifies that all street furniture including lighting columns and signposts, on roads over 50 mph (70 kph) should be passively safe (ie should collapse under impact and hence reduce the risk of injury/death to the occupants of the vehicle).

Solution

Over the past 15 years, EPL has been researching and developing passively safe lighting columns and signposts. These structures are not only designed to be maintenance free but have been tested to meet all the necessary European standards including EN40, EN12899 and EN12767.

Over 400 composite lighting columns and signposts have been installed in trial sites across the UK. To date there have been 4 major high speed accidents involving these composite columns resulting in no fatalities.

Benefits

The benefits of composite lighting columns and signposts include:

• Passively safe to minimise injury to vehicle occupants
• Lightweight and easy to install
• Enhanced corrosion resistance
• Excellent through life cost savings

Commercialisation

In order to commercialise this technology, EPL has signed a joint development agreement with 3M, one of the global leaders in road safety.

3M have the worldwide exclusive rights to commercialise the passively safe lighting columns and signposts, which will be a major step forward in improving road safety.

If you would like to know more please call: +44 (0) 1509 210027