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| Boylan Group February 2013 |
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Visit by International Road Federation chief
International road safety expert ... IRF chief Mike Dreznes
BOYLAN Group is sponsoring next month's visit to Australia by Mike Dreznes, the executive vice-president of the International Road Federation.
Mr Dreznes is recognised as one of the world's leading experts on roadside safety and travels the world promoting the concept of "forgiving highways". Based in Chicago, he has conducted road safety seminars in more than 50 countries.
The visit will enable Mr Dreznes to meet with government and industry leaders in Sydney and Melbourne, as well as making the keynote address to the Australian Road Engineering and Maintenance Conference on March 13.
He will also be the lunchtime speaker at a live crash demonstration of the BarrierGuard road safety barrier at Melbourne's Sandown Raceway on March 15.
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Visit our stand for your chance to win a hotlap
Visit our stand at the conference for your chance to win a hotlap at Sandown.
DON'T forget to come and visit our stand at the 8th Australian Road Engineering and Maintenance Conference in Melbourne on March 13 and 14.
The event - sponsored by Boylan Group - has attracted some exciting speakers, including Mike Dreznes, the executive vice-president of the International Road Federation. You'll also get the chance to win a hotlap at Sandown Raceway on Friday, March 15 (the day after the conference) by placing your business card in the prize draw. And just to whet your appetite for the thrills to come, we've included this video of a Porsche 911 doing hot laps at Sandown. (Please note, it is not the vehicle that will be used on the day - Peter Boylan's race car of choice is a Porsche 997 Carrera Cup Car.)  | | Sandown Raceway In A Porsche 911 3.2 Club Sport |
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Safeguarding motorists during the floods
 Helping save lives ... archival footage from the North Queensland installations
BOYLAN Eagle Eye helped safeguard mine workers, contractors and local residents during recent major flooding on the Suttor Developmental Road in North Queensland.
More than 500 unique visitors logged on to the remote monitoring webcam during the seven-day flood event from January 21-28.
The webcam gave people crucial visual and electronic information to help them determine whether it was safe to travel.
The system's unique "no power, no wires" technology allows monitoring units to be installed in even the most remote locations.
The Suttor Developmental Road is an important thoroughfare servicing several mines.
A co-operative partnership between Rio Tinto, Xstrata Coal and the Queensland
Department of Main Roads, saw two Eagle Eye units installed early last year to monitor Bee Creek and Peak Gully - streams that cause road flooding in times of high rainfall.
Brendan Doyle, of RMTek - the technical support behind the Eagle Eye system - said the remote monitoring units saved authorities time and money.
"The SMS alerts the Eagle Eye system generates are another really useful early warning tool," he said.
To learn more about Eagle Eye, visit www.boylan.net.au or call (02) 9425 3000.
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Come and see BarrierGuard put to the test
BarrierGuard crash demonstration ... Matt Sofi will drive the test car at Sandown
DON'T miss out on one of the key events in the industry calendar this year - a live crash demonstration at Melbourne's Sandown Raceway on Friday, March 15.
Sponsored by Coates Hire and Boylan Group, the demonstration will showcase the life-saving properties of the groundbreaking BarrierGuard road safety barrier. The demonstration will involve a car impacting the barrier at 80km/h after crossing one lane of traffic at an angle of 15 degrees.
Barrierguard - the highest-rating road safety barrier in Australia - has been designed to absorb an impact and will redirect the vehicle back on to the road with minimal damage to the car or the barrier. Attendees will be invited to inspect both the car and the barrier following the impact.
Other road safety products will also be on show on the day, with industry experts on hand to answer questions.
People interested in attending the live crash demonstration are invited to email patriciaf@boylan.net.au for further details.
To watch a live crash demonstration conducted in Sydney recently, visit www.boylan.net.au
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Spectator safety a priority: CAMS
Close thing... five spectators were seriously injured by this runaway vehicle
THE Confederation of Australian Motorsport has called for a greater focus on spectator safety following last month's mud racing accident in Gippsland.
CAMS manager of track safety, Bruce Keys, said the event, which saw five people injured when a ute crashed out of control, was not held "under the sanction of CAMS".
"This incident, unfortunate as it was, should serve as a good reminder to us all regarding the need to always ensure suitable physical protection and separation exists between vehicles and persons," Mr Keys said.
The Dalyston Mud Run ended in chaos after the ute lost control and ploughed into a group of spectators, most of them children.
A 22-year-old volunteer fireman emerged as one of several heroes amid the confusion after he unpinned a 15-year-old girl's arm that was stuck in the heavily-modified axle of the vehicle.
Quick-thinking Ashley England stopped spectators from hurling the car back down the bank with the girl's arm still stuck. He then bravely climbed under the 4WD and freed her.
The girl was later taken to hospital with leg and pelvic injuries.
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Some interesting facts about our roads ...
DID YOU KNOW?
- The Australian road network covers more than 817,000 kilometres.
- Approximately 657,000 kilometres are controlled by local government - although state- controlled roads account for about three quarters of all vehicle kilometres travelled.
- There are more than 37,000 road bridges across Australia.
- More than three quarters of all passenger kilometres travelled in Australia occur on roads.
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Lane rental charges will sting contractors  Contractors in Kent will be charged for disrupting traffic.
A LOCAL authority in the UK has introduced lane rental charges for utility contractors who disrupt traffic.
Companies will be charged up to $A3000 a day for digging up the busiest roads on the network at peak times under the new Kent Lane Rental Scheme which starts in May, reports Highways Magazine. Kent is the first county council in the UK to run the scheme which aims to push utility contractors to work on the roads during the night and at off-peak times or to use techniques such as tunnelling to avoid closing the road altogether. The scheme covers more than 465 roads in Kent in the areas most susceptible to major roadwork disruption. Revenue generated from the scheme will be invested in further work to cut congestion. A council spokesman said the scheme would force companies to think intelligently about the scale and duration of works on key routes.
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Roadway paving made easy  Quick and easy ... this Dutch invention takes the back-breaking work out of paving.
PAVING city streetscapes can be an arduous and back-breaking task but thanks to Dutchman Henk van Kuijk, it's now as simple as rolling out a carpet.
The inventor's Tiger-Stone machine can create an instant road wherever it travels, laying out bricks in formation to create perfect paving, reports the UK's Daily Mail.
All a worker has to do is load the bricks by hand into a hopper in the desired pattern.
From there, gravity causes them to slide together, in a sheet of paving, onto the ground.
Tiger-Stone can lay 400sq m of new road every day, using paving stones or bricks, compared to a manual tradesman's back-breaking 75 to 100sq m a day output.
Once the bricks are in place, all a contractor has to do is go over the surface with a tamper, and the new roadway is complete.
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Boylan motorsport round-up 
On form ... Matthew Brabham is off to a great start in the US.
THIRD generation racer Matthew Brabham laid down a marker for the rest of the US-based Pro Mazda Teams to chase, when he set the fastest time by a comfortable margin in both the Pro Mazda Championship presented by Cooper Tires official tests. The tests were conducted recently at the Palm Beach and Sebring International Raceways, over four gruelling days.
The young Boylan Team Safety ambassador was more than 7/10th of a second faster than his nearest competitor at the Palm Beach test. The Florida sunshine enabled the Andretti Autosport team to run over 160 laps and finish their extensive test program that had been scheduled.
The teams then packed up and headed for the Sebring International long course for another two-day test starting the next day. Matthew and the Andretti Autosport team immediately continued where they had left off at Palm Beach - at the top of the time sheets.
Sebring is one of Matthew's favourite tracks, and he was in devastating form as he bested the competition by a massive 1.5 seconds. The young 18-year-old has quickly gelled with his new team and is excited about his chances for the upcoming season based on the car speed shown in these tests.
"It was a quality test from my point of view," a happy, but exhausted, Matthew said. "I wish the racing would start tomorrow as we are ready to go."
The first race of the Pro Mazda Championship presented by Cooper Tires, is being held on March 1-2 in Austin, Texas.
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