Patent attributes
The present invention is a pivoting crash barrier for arresting an impacting vehicle without causing excessive injury to the driver. The crash barrier has an easily replaceable expendable gate which houses multiple plastically deformable cables mounted within for absorbing the energy of the impacting vehicle. The crash barrier design causes the cables to deform as an unit, rather than separately. The crash barrier gate is pivotally supported on a horizontal shaft by an operator unit positioned on a first side of a roadway. An engagement stanchion engageable by the outer tip of the lowered gate supports the lowered gate on the second, opposed side of the roadway. The upper sections of both crash barrier stanchions consist of operator heads that can pivot about the vertical axes of their respective mounting posts after the shearing of restraining shear pins whenever a vehicle impact occurs. This swiveling reduces the tendency for the components of the crash barrier other than the gate to sustain significant damage during vehicle impacts. The crash barrier gate further has a latch on the engagement stanchion side that prevents inadvertent gate unlatching from uplift forces to the gate and a simplified method of balancing the crash barrier with counterweights.
