I can still recall the words spoken to me by my driving instructor on my very first driving lesson 26 years ago. “A car in the right hands is a means to get from one place to another, but used incorrectly it becomes a deadly weapon”. He was right, thinking about it logically, if you look how much mass a vehicle has and its ability to accelerate and travel at high speeds, the consequences of even the smallest error can be disastrous, even at very low speed, the damaged caused by impact can be very costly, as I will be indicating in this case study. 

I will be looking at the damaged caused outside a hardware and door manufacturing business unit based on the Essex/Suffolk border and how a very basic device called a safety bollard can help save your business literally thousands of pounds.

Vehicles crashing into commercial buildings might be the last thing you expect as you go about your everyday business but the numbers are on the increase with parking becoming ever harder on industrial parks and drivers willing to take risks by leaving cars poorly parked plus the demand for HGV vehicles and small vans to collect and deliver orders, all adds up to a dangerous cocktail and the unsurprising result of damage to property from vehicles accidently colliding into commercial property is the inevitable result.

Safety bollards are a simple and cost effective way of protecting your property from vehicle damage, whether the accident has happened because the driver had a blind spot, foot slipped off pedal, was too busy looking the wrong way or spilled coffee on their lap. Whatever the excuse accidents do happen and let’s face it even the most careful of drivers can be susceptible to errors. Safety bollards are a useful armoury to assist in preventing high damage cost and injury, the bollards are made from robust steel embedded deep in the ground and reinforced with concrete or anchor bolted to withstand high-impact from vehicles, so essentially creating a safety buffer between the vehicle and your property.

When you consider the area beyond the buffer can contain staff, visitors, merchandise or machinery then this simple outlay and protection is most certainly well worth the cost.

The damaged caused to the wall was made by a delivery driver making a three point turn from the forecourt back out on to the main road. Our customer had just had a new dwarf wall built a few days before and it was now wrecked. Now that Action Handling have installed these high-impact and alert yellow barriers both the wall and the customer's property are protected for decades to come.

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