Safety bollards are a simple but effective solution for traffic management and H&S compliance. With a wide variety to choose from, in this article, we take a look at five different types of safety bollards and their functions.
Commercial premises where off-road and on-road vehicles operate all have their own individual risk points and challenges. Whether that’s areas in which pedestrians and vehicles both feature or where a collision could cause serious structural damage.
Badly managed site traffic can obviously put people in dangerous situations and attract heavy Health and Safety penalties if and when the worst happens. You could also find that even a minor collision interrupts your business day, and results in costly repairs to the vehicle and/or your building.
Strategically placed safety bollards offset these risks significantly. Primarily by alerting both drivers and pedestrians to risks. Modern versions can also serve more purposes, as the following five types of safety bollards illustrate.
1. EV Charging Point Protection
With the growing use of electric vehicles, workplaces are making provisions for easily accessible charging ports in public and commercial parking areas.
This can leave you with a new area of vulnerability though, as vehicles bumping into or even scuffing your charging points can mean expensive repairs or replacements.
Brandsafe offers an effective solution to this modern-day problem; in the form of safety bollards specifically designed to guard your electric vehicle charging equipment. They can be quickly and easily installed to shield EV charging points.
These products also help to flag up your facilities for electric car, van and truck charging, as well as guiding drivers to the best parking positions to use them.
As standard, we offer product packages that will cover either light, medium or heavy-duty impact risks. Alongside our standard options, we can also offer bespoke solutions that are made-to-measure to provide the best possible protection for your site’s EV charging points.
2. Flexible Bollards & Delineators
The role safety bollards play in alerting site users to risks is well illustrated with our range of bollards and accessories to mark out traffic routes. It’s hard to miss a strategically placed array of flexible bollards and delineators in high-vis colours.
However, one of the advantages of this product range is that if something does hit these safety bollards at low speeds, they bend and move, before taking up their original shape and configuration.
This means that if vehicles do make contact, there’s no damage done. As they are relatively low-cost, you can use flexible bollards extensively for temporary and permanent traffic management.
3. Flexible Delineator – Parking Bay Signage
This addition to our versatile and long-lasting flexible bollard range will help businesses to manage traffic flows with agility and confidence. Flexible delineators to indicate parking bays will become an increasingly popular safety solution as staff return to the workplace and more in-person site meetings take place.
Collisions in parking areas are not the only problem that can be solved with this type of safety bollard though. You can also solve a lot of confusion for visitors to your site, and make sure that drivers park logically and neatly.
Flexible delineators that feature parking bay indicators currently include options to mark out either Disabled or Electric Vehicle Parking Bays.
This product is easy to spot, but unlike permanent parking signage, you can move it around when needed. If vehicles do make contact, the materials and design avoid structural damage to the vehicle and the bollard itself.
4. Bollard Cover Kits
This is undoubtedly one of the most cost-effective types of safety bollard options, that still manages to play a role in keeping vehicles flowing safely and sites incident-free.
These snap-fit, polymer moulded bollard cover kits turn your existing posts into an easy-to-spot safety structure. The kits come in various high-vis colours, so you can categorise your posts. They are also available in a range of sizes, all fitted with reflective bands to increase visibility in poor light.
As they require little-to-no maintenance, they are an ideal all-weather, 24-hour system to guide traffic and make your site posts more obvious.
5. Demountable Drop Core Bollards
Like all the safety bollards outlined here, demountable drop core bollard options are easy and quick to install, as well as being highly cost-efficient.
As the name suggests, Demountable Drop Core Bollards can also be swiftly relocated as your site traffic needs change. They are not flimsy though. Made from steel and polyethylene, these safety bollards are designed to highlight and protect high-risk areas. This includes warehouse loading bays and external site entrances / exits.
The five colours all feature 50mm reflective strips to improve visibility in lower light.
Which Safety Bollards Do I Need?
With such an extensive range of safety bollards available, it can sometimes be difficult to know if you have the correct systems to meet current and changing site requirements. Contact Brandsafe for free advice on traffic management and safety features in your workplace.
