Abstract
An energy-absorbing guardrail terminal was developed at the Midwest Roadside Safety Facility in 1994 that met the safety criteria set forth in NCHRP Report 230. This terminal, known as the beam-eating steel terminal, or BEST, relies on the cutting of steel W-beams to absorb the energy of impacting vehicles. Since that time, a new set of safety standards has been developed to replace those set forth in NCHRP Report 230. These new criteria are published in NCHRP Report 350, with the most significant change being the replacement of the 2041-kg (4,500-lb) sedan test vehicle with a 2000-kg (0.75-ton) pickup. To ensure that the BEST system would perform well under these new, and more stringent, criteria, the system was subjected to the matrix of full-scale vehicle crash tests required by NCHRP Report 350. Several design changes were made to the terminal system during this development to improve the performance of the system. The results of this successful program are reported.
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