Safe Pavements - Trips, Slips and Wheelchair Accessibility
Accessibility standards and building codes deal with individual elements of pavement safety. But there is no one regulation that clearly defines a truly safe pavement for all users. To help us develop products that are safe and comfortable for everyone, Oaks reviews and adopts design standards used by other industries.
HEEL SAFE ASME: A112.6.3 SECTION 7.12 - HEEL RESISTANT STRAINERS AND GRATES
This guideline limits the maximum grate hole size to 0.31” (8mm) to help prevent heels from entering paver joints, causing injury or falls. We use it to develop our paving products, including permeable pavers. This size is well below Ontario’s Accessibility Standard of 20mm and the US ADA Standard of 13mm, which focus on wheelchair tires and cane tips.
SLIP-RESISTANT 2012 INTERNATIONAL BUILDING CODE - ANSI A137.1 SPECIFICATIONS FOR CERAMIC TILE
We tested various paver and slab textures (from smooth to textured) and finishes (including EliteFinish™ and ColorBold™) to find out how changes affect slip resistance. All of our products exceeded the recommended DCOF (dynamic coefficient of friction) of 0.42 set by ANSI A137.1 for ceramic tile. Details on the DCOF testing can be found in Oaks Tech Note L2 – Coefficient of Friction Testing for Pavers and Slabs.
WHEELCHAIR VIBRATION ASTM E3028 Standard Practice for Computing Wheelchair Pathway Roughness Index as Related to Comfort, Passability and Whole Body Vibrations from Longitudinal Profile Measurements PathMeT’s was used to measure the Wheelchair Pathway Roughness Index (WPRI) for a number of pavement surfaces. The results showed that pavers/slabs with 2mm wide chamfers have less of an impact on wheelchair users than even poured concrete surfaces. For this reason, all recently developed Oaks products – Eterna, Molina ® , Presidio, Nueva ® Paver, Nueva ® Slab, and Market Paver – have micro-chamfers (less than 2mm wide).
H-20 AND HS-20 LOADING Designers use H-20 or HS-20 from AASHTO to express the extreme load effect created by heavy vehicles (transports, buses and fire trucks) on bridges or other suspended segments such as lids on manholes. Paver systems are installed on a fully supportive base, and are in no way suspended over an opening into which a passing vehicle can collapse; therefore, H-20 or HS-20 loading design principles are not applicable. Refer to Page 08 Pavement Classifications for recommendations on selecting products based on traffic conditions.
H-20 Loading
HS-20 Loading
8,000 lbs
32,000 lbs 8,000 lbs32,000 lbs
32,000 lbs
10
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