Safety fences define safe from unsafe regions and safeguard against falls into such regions. Standards define their required strength and stiffness and specify critical aspects of their geometry. It is implicit that the community of users of safety fences are responsible adults with the further understanding that all ambulatory humans can willfully breach these structures. Despite their de minimis design constraints, technologists have not understood nor met the safety challenges posed by these simple, classical, and ubiquitous structures. The purpose of this paper is to identify a few of the safety shortcomings of fence technology which include the fundamental problem of anthropometric guarding, improperly written standards, the challenge of corrosion, dangerous testing protocols, and the creation of testing hardware.

guardrail, fence, railing, parapet, safety railing, handrail, barrier