Bollards: Why are bollards necessary ?

What is a bollard?

For those out there asking: ‘What is a bollard?’ – street bollards are short and sturdy, vertical posts used to control road traffic, prevent ram-raiding attacks and regulate entrances and exist to exclusive areas.

You’ve likely seen many different styles of bollards in public areas, often lining the street or blocking vehicle access in an otherwise open space.

What are the different materials bollards are made from?

Street bollards come in many different materials. Here are just some of them:

• Plastic
• Stainless steel
• Aluminium
• Wood
• Concrete
• Bicycle parking

There are many types of street bollards that exist in many different places. So, why are street bollards so important? For multiple reasons.

1. They ensure driver safety

Street bollards are an extremely important component of driver safety. Why? Because they help alert drivers to multiple types of danger hazards on the road. These hazards include narrow roads, high curbs, and the potential for high-impact collisions. Street bollards often act as a barrier preventing vehicles from entering pedestrian-only zones and vice versa. This minimises the risk of injury to drivers by ensuring that they do not enter areas unequipped for large vehicles and likely to result in a dangerous accident.

2. They ensure privacy for private landowners

The function of street bollards is to ensure that members of the public know that a specific area of land is a privately owned commercial or residential property. This protects the privacy of landowners and prevents trespassing into exclusive areas.

3. They ensure pedestrian safety

Street bollards not only ensure driver safety but also ensure pedestrian safety. Busy street corners, blind spots, unpredictable traffic stops, and narrow pavements all risk the safety of city inhabitants. The bustling city landscape can be a dangerous space for many categories of people, including young children, elderly people, and those with disabilities. Although it often goes unnoticed, the purpose of the street bollard is to provide a safe pedestrian passage in a city for these groups. Often used along with other forms of barriers to ensure safety for pedestrians, street bollards mark out safe paths for members of the public, pedestrian streets and bike lanes in areas with high volumes of traffic, and also highlight which areas within a city are best to walk in late at night. Without street bollards in cities, people are at a higher risk of multiple danger hazards.

4. They ensure storefront security

Street bollards prevent burglars from ram-raiding large stores and damaging storefronts. In building a secure space between drivers who hope to trespass and a storefront, drivers cannot purposely ram their vehicle into a building in order to burglarise it. Bollards also prevent drivers from accidentally driving directly into a storefront and causing significant damage.

5. Street bollards can be aesthetic

Not all street bollards are colourless, steel barriers. Many are built for aesthetic purposes in order to complement the architectural style of a building. Store owners and private landowners use these steel bollards to stand out from a design perspective and add fixtures to buildings.

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