Evaluation of Existing Roadside Safety Hardware Using Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware (MASH) Criteria

This digest presents the results of National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Project 22-14(03), "Evaluation of Existing Roadside Safety Hardware Using Updated Criteria." The project evaluated the safety performance of widely used non-proprietary roadside safety features by using the "Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware (MASH)," published by AASHTO in 2009. Nine different types of roadside safety hardware were crash tested and evaluated in accordance with MASH. Six of the 10 crash tests performed on these nine safety devices successfully met the MASH evaluation criteria. The roadside safety hardware types included the following: New Jersey safety shape barrier, G4(2W) W-beam guardrail, G4(1S) W-beam median barrier, W-beam transition, U-channel breakaway sign support, perforated square steel tube breakaway sign support, G3 weak post box-beam guardrail, modified G2 weak post W-beam guardrail, and G9 thrie beam guardrail.