ULTRAGUARD™: a global innovation for road safety

ULTRAGUARD™ : First highly retroreflective coating for all vehicule restraint systems

What is ULTRAGUARD™?

ULTRAGUARD™ is a combination of a specially formulated water-based paint and high-reflective glass beads that can be applied vertically to all type of road restraint systems (guardrails, concrete barriers, mobile safety barriers, etc.).

It provides a glare-free, three-dimensional, continuous perception of the roadway, like an Ariane's thread, guiding road users in darkness and in bad weather, thus ensuring, better safety.

ULTRAGUARD™ provides continuous retro-reflective lines at eye-level, defining road geometry. It has been developed to be used in addition of the road marking to give the driver a full perception of the road.

MANY BENEFITS OF ULTRAGUARD™:

• Increase reaction time: it allows drivers to increase their reaction time to obstacles and dangerous driving conditions.

• Enhances depth perception and road awareness: guides drivers more effectively through changes in road direction or curves.

• Non-polluting: avoids the phenomenon of light pollution (no lighting columns, no upward reflection of light, no disturbance of the human sleep cycle or insects cycle).

• 0 accidents= operational savings: ULTRAGUARD™ makes barriers highly visible to road users in all weather conditions. With a reduction in accidents, there is no need to frequently replace road restraint systems. Interventions are limited and the cost is reduced.

• High visibility: it allows high visibility of curves, central islands, construction sites, tunnels, unlit roads and especially in adverse weather conditions.

• Durability: ULTRAGUARD™ is a low profile marking protected from the wear and tear experienced by road marking. The glass beads protect the paint and increase the durability of the marking.

To sum up: there is no other pavement delineation system on the market today at a comparable price that offers the same high level of safety that drivers need.

ULTRAGUARD™ : the road safety concept and innovation

Why do we need to change the road safety paradigm?

For many years, the emphasis has been on measures to change driver behaviour (rather than on redesigning parts of the road, vehicle or control system) to eliminate driver error.

This mindset is changing, but the misplaced emphasis on the importance of driver error is still too dominant in thinking on the subject worldwide.

Human error is inevitable. There is no point in thinking that it can somehow be eliminated or that its consequences can be avoided. Where the characteristics of the road and the vehicle lend themselves to it, systematic driver error will lead to a collision, sometimes with fatalities or serious injuries. A much more useful way of identifying actions to reduce serious accidents is to focus on the level of safety of the infrastructure and vehicles that interact with routine driver error.

When we drive, 90% of the information we need to do so is visual.

Every decision we make, every action we take while driving is the result of what we have seen. That is why ULTRAGUARD™ is the first solution to provide total visibility and understanding of the road for all road users in all situations. The aim is to anticipate in order to perceive situations sufficiently in advance, analyse them correctly and make the appropriate driving decisions.