AASHTO and FHWA announce the release of three new responses to questions that were submitted from the highway safety community regarding the testing of roadside safety hardware under the Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware (MASH), 2016, which is published by AASHTO and adopted by FHWA as guidance to evaluate the results of crash tests submitted for federal-aid eligibility.
The responses were developed by a joint AASHTO/FHWA technical working group consisting of representatives from state transportation departments, the Federal Highway Administration, and accredited crash testing laboratories. The purpose of the Q&A document is to further clarify the intent of various sections of MASH, as well as to assist manufacturers, crash test laboratories, and transportation agencies in using the guidelines to develop and implement roadside safety devices.
This updated Q&A document, dated November 15, 2021, is a compilation of all new and previous Qs&As back to May 2018, and can be found at https://design.transportation.org/mash-implementation/.