Steel guardrails, with their industrial, bland, gray appearance, could be much improved on, at least in areas where they are seen by local pedestrians on a daily basis. For small sections of steel guardrails, local governments could hire a design or engineering firm to create more attractive guardrails. They could also hold a contest for local metal-working artisans to submit safe but attractive guardrail designs, which could then be reviewed by safety boards before commissioning fabrication.
Steel guardrails are there for safety. Planning roads that give pedestrians and cyclists more room between shoulder and guardrail is a safety consideration. State highway departments could keep a comment line open for citizen's reports of both roads in need of guardrails and roads with guardrails that pose a safety hazard to pedestrians or cyclists. Both Internet comment submission forms and a toll-free phone number would be helpful in collecting comments from the people who use the highways the most, and sometimes have to face unsafe roadways daily during commutes.
Sometimes, guardrails that are necessary in residential areas can be quite an eyesore. Neighborhoods can come together for a little do-it-yourself guardrail beautification. This may mean training morning glories, night-blooming jasmine or other flowing vines up the guardrails, or decorating them with colorful dried corn in the fall or Christmas lights during the dark winter. Do not cut the guardrails or alter their structure when decorating, though, as that could alter their safety effectiveness.
Steel guardrails are only one of several measures that can be taken for road safety. Sometimes other measures will work better on a given road, and steel guardrails should be augmented with these other measures or else replaced entirely. Colored road markings, textured roads and better grading are all possible safety improvements, as are concrete guardrails. Various state highway departments could start a program that allocates funds to overhauling unsafe roads in under-served areas to make them safer, not just with more guardrails, but with whatever is best suited to each particular situation.