“National Work Zone Awareness Week (NWZAW) is an annual spring campaign held at the start of construction season to encourage safe driving through highway work zones. The key message is for drivers to use extra caution in work zones.”
National Work Zone Awareness Week began Monday (4/8). It is scheduled to end on Friday (4/12). A more appropriate name might have been to call it “National Work Zone Awareness Not Quite A Week”. Most likely there was an engineer behind this calculation. To further raise awareness, many Transportation related organizations have urged their members to wear orange today. I am wearing mine now. I will be easy to spot if you see me out. That is kind of the point.
For a good part of my professional career I was directly involved with all types of road construction. The largest percentage of this work was completed on existing roadways, thus moving vehicles were the norm. Imagine for a minute, that as you are sitting reading this that there are cars whizzing by you in both directions, each but a few feet if not inches away. Such is the environment of workers who are involved in road construction.
On projects under my direct charge, a high emphasis was placed on traffic safety. This emphasis was not for only for our workers, it was also for the motorists passing through. In setup of traffic control, one of the common themes that I related to those under my charge was the following: I asked them to imagine a family in a minivan; A van full of kids with the husband asleep, wore out from driving through the night that had just passed. His wife, behind the wheel now, distracted by the kids who are bored and irritated. Our goal was to clearly guide her through our project without incident. There had to be no doubt on the path that would safely navigate her through the unknown. And yes, a construction zone is just that, an unknown.
Every company, every project approaches traffic safety with a varying degree of effectiveness. I rarely pass through an active construction zone that does not piss me off from one oversight or another related to traffic control. There are too many times a laziness, a lack of detail paid to such. During the period when we were rehabbing all of the interstates around Lexington, we were good at what we did and took the pride and extra steps to ensure safe passage for all, including our workers. Over the course of the those several years of construction, despite our best efforts, many still died on accidents within our project limits.
As both an engineer and a practical observer, I have some advice that you can take to heart, not only in work zones but when driving in general: Slow Your Ass Down, keep plenty of distance between you and the vehicle in front of you and wear a seat belt. This is pretty simple advice. Statistics or whatever measure you want to use will bear this out.
As both an engineer and practical observer, I can tell you that there have been some that have failed to follow these simple rules. They are now forever etched in my memory, though I knew nary a soul. It is a sad testimony that as I write this morning I reflect on how there is no clearer demonstration of the laws of physics then those that accompany the aftermath of a fatal accident. There are no limits to what an unrestrained body or an unprotected worker can be subjected to. When man meets machine at 70 MPH, man loses.
I have seen a single shoe in the middle of a roadway. The other, still covering the foot of a victim several hundred feet from where he was first hit. I have seen the trajectory of an object, in this case a 40 pound grate, put in random motion by a truck that was in a hurry, the driver of which had decided the edge line did not apply to him. Murphy’s law requires that the aforementioned grate, when launched airborne, would fly through the passenger side windshield with such a precision of direction that it is was neither impeded nor deflected by the frame of the vehicle as it made its way to a chest of an elderly lady. Each vehicle was going too fast. One was following much too close. They were both in a construction zone.
You want opposing reaction to action, imagine young kids, launched from the same vehicle, coming to rest in both the east and west bound slow lanes of an interstate being rehabilitated One hundred or so feet from one another, each in perfect line with the car between them and directly perpendicular to the centerline. The greatest engineers in the world couldn’t design such an occurrence given a million trials to do so. Such is the randomness with which these things occur. You cannot begin to count the paint marks that the reconstructionist used on this one.
Obviously, a construction zone deviates from the norm a motorist expects. As such, when passing through one, common sense dictates that you should slow down and increase your awareness. Common sense, for the majority of drivers is never applied. Even under perfect conditions, there is a percentage of drivers that you cannot plan for. Whether they be impaired or just going much too fast, there will never exist a perfectly safe environment. It just doesn’t happen.
I want to let you in on a secret. Outside of the higher level facilities, most roadways are woefully inadequate for the purpose of safety and the drivers of today. Even a roadway such as an interstate, a facility designed to provide a sense of familiarity and understanding with many additional allowances for safety, are usually not maintained as they should be, making much of the safer characteristics of such a roadway, moot. A simple pothole on a two lane roadway can be the difference between life and death. Driving safely is a serious responsibility. There are no justifiable reasons for not attempting to drive in the most responsible manner possible.
When teaching Holley to drive, I stressed the issue of speed and providing safe distance between the vehicle in front of you. This was when we lived in Wilmore and as many as you know the two lane roadways in the Bluegrass are many times encroached on by an oak tree or such. Trees don’t give. When hit by a moving vehicle, they merely slice though metal, plastic and fiberglass and perhaps lose a leaf or two from the resulting quiver imparted to the top. Advising your daughter that the puppy that is in her path should most times be treated as roadkill, is not one of the roles of parenting that I enjoyed advocating, even though the advice be true and necessary.
I remember Philip telling me that when his son, who had just turned 16, was clamoring for the opportunity to go look at cars. Philip happily obliged. He woke his son early one Saturday morning and took him to the local junkyard. He said they looked at a lot of cars that morning. Many with the blood stains still remaining. Door touching door does that. Engines in the back seat do so as well. We each have a responsibility to ourselves and others to consider the worse. Both Philip and I did. We had each seen firsthand the results of unexpected occurrences. There is nothing routine about everyday driving. Even if you are the best you are sharing the road with the worst.
I have never known anyone who wanted to lose another in an accident. This is as it should be. The workers who are doing their best to take the steps to make our roadways better and thus safer, deserve the same consideration. Certainly, most are doing it for the paycheck to support the family they want to enjoy for forever, but they are also doing it for you and yours. Be respectful and smart. Slow Your Ass Down and Pay Attention!
Feel the Burg 