Graters

What do you guyz think about cable barriers?

They kinda look like cheese graters to me. http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/resourcecenter/teams/safety/safe_mrt_cable.cfm Newton's first law: law of inertia Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by force impressed... ...I figure I'd probably be moving parallel to the cables. The cables don't bother me nearly as much as all those vertical posts.

Public Comments

1. I think they are awesome for cars. The cables can stretch and slow a car down much less abruptly than concrete/steel medians... and honestly if you've lost the road when riding a motorcycle on a highway, you're already in BIG trouble.
2. They are kind of scary when you think about it. Studies have been done that show them to be no additional threat than concrete or metallic barriers. There was also an issue of horrendous injury, but they found no such increase with the cable barriers. Whether or not we can trust the studies, we can infer this: If you were going fast enough to be dismembered by cable barriers (all that I have seen have four cables) and/or killed, then you were moving fast enough to be killed by a concrete wall or metal beam barriers. The metal beam barriers actually have been known to decapitate/dismember riders when the slide under the beam and "in between" the supports of the metal beams (the supports run vertical and the beams are horizontal). In other words, no matter how "she wrote it," if you slam into either of the barriers with enough force to kill you based on impact or dismemberment, you're dead or seriously injured either way. So, for cars, they'll probably save more lives over the rigid barriers as the cables "give" and unbeknownst to the majority, many people die in car wrecks from their organs (especially the brain) "smashing" up against the front of the body in a hard stop. For bikers, we're still SOL.
3. while i do not want to hit any barrier, I could find it easy to believe that a cable (When slide along) could act as a saw and cut body parts off. Now cement barriers could just crush and destroy. Which is safer for motorcyclist ? this study seems to show no increase in death between the 2 types http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/NR/rdonlyres/B8AE3AB6-3120-4949-A59E-350C5773780C/0/CableMedian_Ch1.pdf
4. I think they have more of a psychological effect on me than armco or concrete i.e. they make me wanna slow down and be more careful 'cos I feel like I'm gonna get sliced like an egg.