¶ End Terminal
The starting point of the guardrail or barrier is referred to as the end terminal or treatment. The exposed end of the guardrail needs to be treated to prevent it spearing or flipping vehicles.[1]
¶ Identification
If you are working with an enter terminal but not sure which one, check out this guide.
¶ Operation
These end terminals function in two ways.
Non-Redirective/Attenuating/Energy Absorbing - The impact head slides down the guardrail flattening, ripping, or extruding the guardrail and redirecting the guardrail away from the vehicle until the vehicle's impact energy is dissipated and the vehicle has decelerated to a stop.
Redirective/Gating/Non-Energy Absorbing - The impact head "gates" out of the way allowing the vehicle to pass behind the guardrail. This means the terminal and guardrail is pushed through, as if opening a gate.
Some terminals are discretely gating while others are both gating and attenuating depending on the angle of impact.
¶ Devices
Our device list is compiled from a number of industry guides and summaries described on our sources page. Different versions of the same product (including MASH versions and median terminals) are given as versions on the product page.
| Name | Example Image |
|---|---|
| ArmorWire End Terminal | |
| Bursting Energy Absorbing Terminal (BEAT) |  |
| Brakemaster 350 | |
| Breakaway Cable Terminal (BCT) |  |
| Brifen Cable Terminal | |
| Buried-in-Backslope Terminal |  |
| Cable End Terminal Low Tension | |
| Cable End Terminal | |
| Cable Guardrail Anchor | |
| Crash Cushion Attenuating Terminal (CAT-350) | |
| Eccentric Loader Terminal (ELT) |  |
| Extruder Terminal (ET-Plus) |  |
| Flared Energy-Absorbing Terminal (FLEAT) |  |
| Florida Low-Profile Barrier Terminal | |
| Low-Profile Concrete Barrier End Treatment | |
| Low-Profile Construction-Zone End Treatment | |
| MAX-Tension |  |
| Modified Eccentric Loader Terminal (MELT) |  |
| NUCOR Cable End Terminal | |
| Regent-C |  |
| Quadtrend 350 | |
| Safence Cable End Terminal | |
| Sequential Kinking Terminal (SKT) |  |
| Sentry Longitudinal Energy Dissipater (SLED) End Terminal | |
| Slotted Rail Terminal (SRT) |  |
| Soft Stop End Terminal |  |
| Steel Backed Timber Guardrail Tangent End Terminal | |
| Trailing-End Anchorage |  |
| TREND 350 |  |
| Triton Barrier Concrete End Treatment | |
| Vermont G1-d |  |
| Wyoming Box-Beam End Terminal (WY-BET) |  |
| X-Lite Terminal |  |
| X-Tension |  |
| Turned Down End On Any Barrier |  |
FHWA, Guardrail 101 ↩︎