Navigation | ||
My WhyNot? | ||
Icon Key | ||||||||||||
The community's level of support for this idea is...
| ||||||||||||
Flexible Telephone Poles | |||||||||||||||||
Why not have telephone poles that are on roads where people are especially prone to skidding off that aren't so stiff and ungiving as current ones? How many deaths could be prevented if when a car hits a telephone pole, it gave a little and didn't act as an immovable object to destroy the car and the people in it?I guess the overriding question here is why are telephone poles made as such a hazard? Obviously they have to be sturdy to keep power lines up through storms and to remain durable. However, there's a tradeoff wherein they are a hazard they way that they are. Why can't we design them a better way? Perhaps made of rubber so they would be flexible? Or even some kind of breakaway type of pole that breaks away when hit by a car at a certain speed and at the same time releases the power lines so they aren't dragged down in a hazardous situation?There has to be a better way.
lowings, Jun 19 2006
What do you think of this idea or comment?
| |||||||||||||||||
I agree
No opinion
I disagreeUsers who liked this idea also liked: | ||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||
Add your comment
Admittedly rigid objects in the path of moving vehicles is dangerious and should be remedied but compromising the strength of the support structures of the electrical infrastructure seems to me a bad solution. The best solution would be to eliminate the poles by burying the electrical cables but another possibility would be to barracade the offending structures behind an impact absorbing system to minimizing damage to vehicles and passengers and prevent damage to the electrical structures.
I agree, there has to be a better way, but I agree with sand, it should be below ground. The problem with comprimising the structure of the poles is the same problem that suspension bridges had until they put stiffeners and dampners in to keep the wind from creating harmonic frequencies.
Utility poles in heavily populated areas usually are either barricaded, set back from the road behind curbs, or of the "breakaway" type; the problems are usually with poles in more remote locations, where the statistical risk of collision is low; the liklihood of funding barricading all those rural electric poles is even lower.
This is something that I had always thought about. It makes me sad to see someone injured after hitting a telephone pole. Actually, the reason I just searched this topic tonight is because a 20 year old girl was just killed after hitting a pole in my home town last week.
Break away poles do exist, however I don't think they are all that popular yet because there is not enough data out there to show whether they can effectively replace traditional poles. I do know that in the early 90's three of these break away telephone poles were installed along the main road in my hometown (Bellingham, MA) as an experiment. They strategically placed them in an area where they were most likely to be hit based on past accidents. Last I checked (in 2009), the poles were still intact so it doesn't appear that anyone has struck them. It seems to me that these poles are a good step forward however it's a shame that they may not become the norm until more data is collected.