Highway construction injury toll rises

200 more workers injured last year than '99

By Ellen Hickok-Wall
Daily Reporter Staff

Everyone knows it's better to be safe than sorry.

Highway construction workers know that adage well, as 900 were killed in work zones nationwide last year.

While Wisconsin boasted no work-zone worker deaths in 2000, 1,210 people were injured - nearly 200 more than in 1999.

For highway constructors, staying out of harm's way presents many challenges. One challenge the vulnerable workers can't control is behaviors of people driving through work zones.

"Construction workers risk their lives each time they report to their jobs, which often place them within inches of vehicles traveling more than 50 miles per hour," said Carl Thiesen, safety manager for Payne & Dolan Inc., one of the prime contractors on the Highway 45 project in Milwaukee.

"We remind all of our workers at the start of every shift that safety is their top priority," Thiesen said. "We ask that motorists do the same and remember that these workers are neighbors and have families, too."

Highway laborers are doing more and more work at night, according to Thiesen, to ease the effect of construction on people using the highways.

But night work adds another danger, he said.

"Any time that you add a typical hazard list for road construction and complicate it by saying that you will do it in the dark, you make it more dangerous," Thiesen said.

"You can install all of the appropriate traffic control devices - signs, barrels - but they're only as good as the motorist behind the wheel," he said. "We rely on them to operate as a prudent driver."

This year, the Federal Highway Administration sponsored its second annual National Highway Work Zone Safety Week.

With a theme Stay Alert, the event featured a memorial to 868 workers who were killed in work-zone crashes throughout the nation in '99.

FHWA records show an increase by nearly 15 percent in deaths and injuries among highway workers and others in construction work zones on U.S. highways.

Safety is recurring theme

On the home front, Gov. Scott McCallum joined a team of U.S. and Wisconsin Department of Transportation officials, law enforcement officers and contractors in issuing a safety message.

"We urge drivers to remember that lives of highway workers are in their hands," he said. "In the last 10 years statewide, 119 persons have been killed and 12,388 injured in work-zone crashes."

McCallum said that 2001 also will see a busy construction season in southeast Wisconsin. There are several major resurfacing projects, including 15 miles of northbound Highway 45 in Milwaukee County and 12 miles of I-94 in Racine County.

"Even one fatality is too many," McCallum said. "We must take a tough, zero-tolerance stance on highway deaths. Work-zone safety is a key to these efforts."

The majority of people killed in work zones are not construction workers, according to Mike Goetzman of the Wisconsin Department of Transportation.

But that doesn't mean that the workers involved in an accident aren't traumatized, he said.

Numbers the DOT gathers are somewhat misleading, though.

"If a worker is run over by a dump truck, we count that as an industrial accident," Goetzman said.

Regardless of where the numbers are tallied, U.S. agencies are working with state transportation departments to educate workers and drivers about preventive measures.

The first measure on the Milwaukee County Sheriff Lev Baldwin's list is for drivers to slow down.

"Excessive speed and following vehicles too closely are the major causes of work-zone crashes," said Baldwin, who has deployed extra patrols in the Highway 45 construction area.

"Slow down and leave enough space between your car and the car in front of you," Baldwin said. "Allow extra time. When traveling through work zones, expect delays. Be patient."