I heard they kept hydroxychloroquine in them. badaboom, crash
Actually, not. I had a friend who worked for a company who made those things. He said Idaho DOT bought some and called back complaining that they weren't working to save lives. Turned out that their crews were finding water was evaporating out of some valves and so they plugged them. The valve are the key safety feature in the design. When somebody hits one, they bleed the water off to reduce the energy of the impact. A static barrel of water is just like a concrete post when somebody hits them at freeway speed. Or sand or frozen water. All the same. The barrel has to have a way to deform and bleed off energy of the impact. Not all barrels are the same. Some are empty, some do have sand in them. The ones they use on freeways are called impact attenuators.
I found this:
If those crash barrels are filled with water, why don't they freeze in the winter?
Kelly from Loveland writes,
“What's driving you crazy? Last week you talked about an accident where the car hit some barrels filled with water and that caused the highway to get all wet. Doesn't the water freeze during winter and the wouldn't you just hit the barrels filled with solid ice?”
Kelly, that is a very astute observation and a great question. What I am told from the construction workers is that the impact attenuator that was hit, the barrel as I called it on TV, was partially filled with liquid magnesium chloride, not pure water. The contractor assures me that the mag chloride solution will not freeze, even in the coldest Denver temperatures, so no one will ever hit an attenuator full of ice.
www.thedenverchannel.com
