A WIRE roadside barrier that stopped a motorist plummeting down a 300ft gorge is now used all over the world – after first being installed at the beauty spot two decades ago.
The man behind the award-winning Brifen safety fence got in touch after pictures of the MG sports car teetering on the edge of Buttertubs Pass, in the Yorkshire Dales, appeared in The Northern Echo.
Graham Sharp was working at British Ropes, in Gateshead, in the Eighties, selling wire ropes to the Middle East oil and gas industry, when he spotted the potential for wire road safety barriers, as they would allow drifting sand to pass through.
A wire safety system had been used on the M62 for two decades previously, but a new system was needed to pass strict safety regulations.
After spending five years and £2m on development alongside the Department of Transport, the Brifen system was launched.
The first order was from North Yorkshire County Council for the Buttertubs Pass.
The patented system was also taken up at about the same time by Durham County Council for a stretch of the A1, between Darlington and Durham.
Since then, it has gone global and is currently used in 30 countries, including the US, Australia and South Africa.
Mr Sharp travels the world as Brifen sales director, but still remembers his first order for Buttertubs Pass.
“I was jumping up and down and doing somersaults,” he said.
“That was the beginning of it.
It was ideal for the Buttertubs because snowploughs could push snow over the edge.”
The Echo reported last month how a 27-year-old man lost control of his MG sports car on the pass, between Thwaite and Hawes, and that it was only stopped from going over the edge by the steel safety barrier. The man, from Surrey, was not seriously hurt.
Mr Sharp said he was delighted to see evidence of the wires in action, and revealed that he had received comments on the article from around the world.
The wire ropes at the Buttertubs Pass also featured in BBC motoring programme Top Gear, when presenter Jeremy Clarkson was filmed sitting on the wire, then covered in a protective green plastic, and questioning why “hosepipe” was being used.
Mr Sharp said he wrote to the presenter to “set him straight”.
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