Vehicle Gate Access Control Guide-old

Great article. 

Awesome article, Mr. Rhodes!

Good article.

I will say gates are more complex than I thought. They require some careful planning because once a road is cut up and put back together, you better have all your cables in place.

Loop design is important, we also see arming loops, where the system will not open unless a car is present. It prevents pedestrians from opening the gate. There's other purposes for loops as well.

I also did not see any mention of the safety issues. There are a lot of rules to follow on pinch points, crush zones and impalement.

We have a gate company do all of our gate work. When people call for gate repair, you better be prepared to troubleshoot a REX or weld something. It is a wide skill set.

Besides fast traffic gates(barriers we call it) what are the best practices to minimize tailgating?

Really well done Sir!

Not detracting from an excellent article and not teaching anyone to suck eggs, integrators in the UK should be aware of the DHF TS 011 code of practice for powered gates & barriers - version 3 2018, that focus's heavily on the safety aspects of automated gates and barriers after a number of prosecutions in recent years.

The Tech Standard has been adopted by NSI so can be regarded as a definitive Code of Practice, with a new NSI category of "Gates Gold".

The recent custodial sentences and fines include: 2.5 year manslaughter conviction and £50k fine for crush death.

Brian - Excellent article that touches on all of the highs (and lows) of installing access on vehicular gates. I believe a couple of the posts brought up concerns regarding the safety aspect of powered gates and I'd like to see your future update of this guide to include a synopsis of the UL 325 Entrapment standard. UL updated this standard in 2016 and basically breaks down installations into four different classes, which depend on type of operator used and the category of facility they protect. Conforming to this standard is mandated by most AHJs on residential installations, but is optional on commercial installations. However, it should not be "optional" given the litigious nature of our society. Any attorney with half a brain would use this national standard to prove negligence on the part of the installing company should property damage or personal injury result from a "bad" install. If you are going to install motorized gates, familiarize yourself with the safety requirements and design them into your installations...or else.

Hi Brian,

We're looking into pedestrian gates to control access and flow.  Wondering if you have written about that.

Turnstiles may not work for our situation.  Although, I do like the people counting feature.

Some of what we are looking at:

It would have to work with existing access control we have (Genetec).

I ran into an interesting situation involving a parking garage the other day. This was a new construction last year, and they placed a loop at the card reader that would only allow the door to open if there was a vehicle (customer complains that they have problems with motorcycles and bikes). I have never seen a loop installed in that instance before and wondered how common that was now days.