Features

Danish company DELTA, a leading supplier of retroreflectometers for road markings and road signs, will launch its LTL-M mobile retroreflectometer at Traffex in Birmingham, UK.

As engineers write tighter and tighter specifications for grouting, so equipment manufacturers must develop solutions which can help contractors meet those specifications, and prove that they have met them Atlas Copco's new mobile grouting system, Unigrout Smart A, has been designed to do just that: it can mix, pump, monitor, log and control flow and pressure precisely. The control system allows on site mixing of a range of grouts as required by the project.

A study sponsored by the American Glass Bead Manufacturers' Association reveals that "a growing number of imported glass bead products for highway markings exhibit high concentrations of heavy metals, including arsenic and lead."

A new agreement between Volvo and Sweden's CeDe Group will see a new range of tunneling machines coming to the market.

A new technique for assessing the impacts of tunnels on nearby buildings and structures will allow a more realistic establishment of risk and could therefore reduce project insurance premiums

Eleven outstanding projects honoured for leading the way in road industry excellence. The winners of the 2010 Global Road Achievement Awards (GRAA) Competition were recognised at the 10th Annual 25 January, 2011. Eleven projects from six different countries around the world were each honoured for leading the way in excellence in a respective category of the road industry.

Michel Démarre gives some historical insights into public-private partnerships conceived to implement urban infrastructure projects, a concept that surprisingly dates back to as early as the 13th century!

Elta Fans supplied specialist ventilation fans for the A3 Hindhead Tunnel in Surrey, UK which opened in July this year.

For the last two years a team of European partners has been examining the interaction between vehicle tyres and road surfaces. According to the UK's TRL, one of the partners in the European project Tyrosafe (Tyre and Road Surface Optimisation for Skid resistance And Further Effects), devices to measure skid resistance were developed at the forerunner of the UK's TRL in the 1930s.

Work-related road safety is an emerging source of concern throughout Europe, which needs renewed commitment from all those involved. It is estimated that in the EU-15, 39% of fatal work accidents are road traffic accidents, and this number would even be considerably higher should accidents while commuting to and from work be included.

Estonia and Ireland's 2010 Road Safety PIN Awards followed wide-ranging efforts to reduce road deaths. In Estonia, road mortality has been halved from 146 deaths per million inhabitants in 2001 to 75 in 2009 (although still above the EU27 average of 70).

While the EU target of reducing deaths by 50% has resulted in impressive figures, there is still more to be done as Patrick Smith reports. The latest statistics show European Union (EU) efforts to reduce road deaths by 50% have met with considerable success. As EU members look to the new European Action Programme for the period 2010 to 2020