Rising Bollards

General

These are our rising bollards in Concorde Road, Norwich. A year or so ago we were plagued by boy racers - they turn up at 7pm when most people have gone home and race round the car park, as bold as brass. So we installed rising bollards on various timers and sensors. The automatic machine guns will be installed shortly.

Job done? Not quite. They break with monotonous regularity and every three months a 40 foot lorry runs into them. You will notice that the flimsy, pathetic yellow uprights at the side have been hit. Fastened in by a few tiny bolts.

Obviously, it should have been solid steel uprights sunk six feet into the ground so that they could withstand a direct hit from a 40 ton lorry doing twenty miles per hour. Or maybe two huge cube of concrete at least six feet square and weighting a hundred tons each sunk several feet into the ground. Sigh.

So, if you build something like this, design it to cope with war conditions. It is impossible to make a barrier too strong. Rent a Sherman Tank and run it into and over it. If it will cope with that it MAY cope with the general public.

Bob Cory

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Modified on 22/09/2019 at 11:59:36 by ℗ Bob Cory