Construction Work Zone Safety Tips to Share with Your Crew

September 29, 2024
Written by the HAAS Alert Team
Brynne Piehowski

Designing and creating a safe work zone on any roadway is a complex challenge. You have to rely on an external traffic company to design traffic flow disruptions, detours, road hazards, and speed and lane changes. At the same time, you must consider and prioritize worker, driver, and pedestrian safety. Finally, all the changes associated with the timing, detours, and delays with this new work zone must be communicated to the public.

All of these unpredictable circumstances lead to a number of work zone challenges. For one, developing consistent and standardized work zone designs is difficult. Making sure your work zones are well-marked and visible to drivers is challenging as well. Finally, keeping your crew safe on the job is one of the most difficult tasks to execute.

The motoring public is more distracted than ever. Drivers scroll through social media, have dogs on their laps, mess with the radio, and more. Cars can be distracting, too. Gear shifts and in-vehicle infotainment centers have become more complicated and distracting, which have the potential to take a driver’s eyes off the road for just a few seconds too long.

If that driver is coming up on a roadway work zone, that can lead to tragic consequences, like a work zone collision. As construction crews are exposed and vulnerable when they're doing work on the road, these crashes are a real risk for them. A recent report says that 12 of the 25 most dangerous jobs, as measured by the rate of people who die at work, are in the construction industry. The following statistics speak to those dangers:

• One work zone fatality occurs in the U.S. for every 4 billion vehicle-miles of travel and every $112 million worth of roadway construction expenditures.
• There were an estimated 96,000 work zone collisions in 2022 — around 37,000 ended in injury, with an estimated 891 fatalities.
• 59% of work zone fatalities in 2022 happened in a construction zone.
• Since 2010, work zone deaths have increased 52%, but have decreased 7% in 2022.

These numbers are more than just statistics. They impact real people on the road just trying to do their jobs every day.

Work zone collisions impact construction workers every day

The majority of people don’t have to worry about getting harmed at their workplace. But when it comes to a road worker, an exposed work zone is their office. Keeping them safe depends on so many factors — message boards, orange barrels, arrowboards, attenuators and other visual alerts. But these measures aren’t always enough to catch a driver’s attention in time.

Construction crews constantly face this danger. As WMAR News reported in May 2024, nearly 2 in 3 contractors reported a crash in a construction work zone over the past year. Data showed that nearly 1 in 4 contracting firms had reported experiencing five or more crashes in the last year. Tragically, almost 1 in 10 respondents reported that a construction worker was killed in a work zone crash.

Data like this prompted the state of Maryland to strengthen their Move Over laws to better protect roadway workers. In June 2024, officials from the state of Ohio made a similar plea.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine joined forces with Ohio State Highway Patrol (OSHP) Superintendent Col. Charles Jones and Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) Director Jack Marchbanks to introduce a new initiative to better protect Ohio work zones. OSHP's Aviation Unit to spot dangerous drivers from the air.

"Drivers are expected to slow down and pay attention in work zones, yet unsafe driving in road construction areas continues to be a serious problem," said Governor DeWine. "I've asked the Ohio State Highway Patrol to dedicate more resources to patrolling work zones, and troopers will have no tolerance for reckless drivers. We're doing this not only to protect road workers but for the safety of all travelers."

Creating stronger initiatives is crucial to advancing roadway safety. But sometimes, they don’t come soon enough. In early 2024, three Pennsylvania construction workers were killed when a large box truck collided with a construction truck directing traffic with flashing arrows in an active work zone.

These workers left their homes fully expecting to return safely at the end of their shift," said officials from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. "Our hearts go out to them, their families and everyone impacted by this tragedy. This incident drives home the fact that motorists need to be alert and drive with caution in our work zones for the safety of our workers and themselves.”

Bringing Vision Zero to construction work zones

Vision Zero is a Swedish initiative that the U.S. adopted in response to the high number of traffic fatalities. Its goal is to reduce, and eventually eliminate, the number of traffic accidents and deaths on U.S. roads by educating the community about traffic safety.

This initiative calls on key stakeholders, from traffic engineers, to vehicle engineers, to roadway planners, to work together in the shared mission to reduce deaths and injuries caused by traffic accidents. Action items include improving the safety of road infrastructure, enhancing the behavior of roadway users, and improving post-crash response.

In addition to the obvious benefit of saving lives, a successfully-executed Vision Zero plan brings forward a myriad of advantages to the community. With safer zones, improved traffic mobility will follow. Improved mobility will also lead to maintained or improved public trust in a roadway project, which can positively impact future budgets.

According to the FHWA, around 24% of non-recurring freeway delays and 10% of overall roadway congestion can be attributed to work zones. That cost adds up quickly. 3M reports that this translated to around 888 million lost hours in 2014 and an estimated annual fuel loss of over 310 million gallons.

But work zones are sometimes unavoidable. In that same year, the U.S. invested a significant amount of money in highway maintenance, repair, and construction. Work zones will always cost money and congestion on the roads. But with the Vision Zero method, they'll be better designed and safer for those construction crews on the job.

Safety tips to share with your crew

There will always be an element of risk for construction workers on the road. But there are ways to mitigate unnecessary risk — it’s up to you to share those tips to create a strong safety culture on all your job sites:

• Be aware of your surroundings — While it should go without saying that a roadside construction worker needs to be hyper aware, it doesn’t hurt to repeat. Remind workers to occasionally take a minute on the job to absorb what’s happening around them. Encourage them to face traffic while inside a work zone or request a spotter when their back is turned.
• Stay hydrated — Asphalt absorbs 95% of the sun’s rays, which means the temperature of asphalt can easily reach 30° F or higher than the surrounding air temperature. That can easily lead to heat-related illnesses among construction crews. Encourage your workers to drink plenty of liquids and take breaks to get out of the heat when possible.
• Participate in daily safety meetings — Every crew should have a daily safety meeting where workers can receive training about best practices and emergency procedures for their specific job. Complacency is one of the top killers in the construction industry. Developing a communication loop with safety meetings will keep workers aware and an active participant in the job’s safety culture.
• Limit cell phone usage to designated safe areas — When it comes to working on the road, crew members need to be as aware as possible. Cell phone usage can dampen that awareness. Consider banning cell phones from all job sites, with the exception of clearly-marked safe areas.
• Advocate for law enforcement assistance — While local police resources may be limited, encourage your workers to let you know if they need law enforcement assistance for an extra level of protection on the job. Positioning an unmanned police vehicle with flashing lights in the work zone can help make the difference between a struck-by collision and a near miss.
• Respect separate work areas — Roadside work zones likely encompass several activities taking place at the same time. Make sure your crew separates these areas with cones or barriers to delineate different areas and avoid any unnecessary accidents.
• Always avoid blind spots — Heavy machinery and equipment are all over worker zones. While operators need to ensure that all mirrors and visual aid devices are attached and operating properly, construction workers on foot need to always stay in visual contact with the driver for maximum visibility.

Protect your crew by creating smart work zones

A construction crew’s supervisors need to empower them to stay safe and vigilant at their job site. But it is also part of a supervisor’s job to actively create additional layers of protection on their job sites. A powerful way to do that is by creating smart work zones through a number of different construction technology applications. Here are a few for you to consider:

• Dynamic lane merge system — These tools adjust the merging process based on real-time traffic conditions. This will allow for a more controlled flow of traffic right by your work zone.
• Incident management system — These solutions allow you to track safety incidents and identify potential hazards and risks at your job sites, allowing you to make more informed decisions moving forward regarding the safety of your crew members.
• Speed safety camera — These automated systems can detect and capture images of speeding cars so you can better enforce speed limits in and around your work zone.
• Variable speed limit (VSL) — This technology is an active traffic management (ATM) strategy that uses dynamic speed limit signs to slow traffic before and through adverse conditions on the freeway to improve work zone safety.
• Implement a digital alert system — These systems send electronic notifications that notify civilian drivers of an upcoming hazard, such as a job site along the side of the road, and prompt them to slow down and move over.

Implement a digital alerting system to improve your crew’s safety

A digital alert system is an electronic notification sent directly to a driver. These alerts inform drivers that there is a nearby or upcoming hazard, such as a construction job site on the side of the road, and they need to slow down and move over.

Civilian vehicles are becoming more technologically-advanced every year, which means that newer models are better integrated with the advanced vehicle-to-everything communication (V2X) that enables them to receive digital alerting. Not to mention that the more construction crews that implement this technology, the more that the lifesaving message to slow down and move for work zone crews will get out there.

Digital alerting is becoming a safety standard because analog alerting tools on their own, like high-visibility vests and cones, are no longer enough to catch a driver's attention. But digital alerts break through to meet drivers where they are with visual and auditory notifications. Advanced warning systems like Safety Cloud by HAAS Alert® mitigate the risks associated with distracted driving.

Vehicles or assets equipped with Safety Cloud immediately send alerts as soon as their lights are activated. Drivers get those alerts up to 30 seconds before they come into contact with a roadway hazard. Alerts are received through leading navigation apps like Waze and compatible in-vehicle infotainment centers.

If a motorist is operating their car at a faster speed, these alerts can reach them up to a half-mile up from the work zone. That gives drivers more than enough time and space to slow down and move over.

This extra time is crucial. The motoring public is driving more distracted than ever, and that has grave consequences. As HAAS Alert's Tom Parbs told the American Road & Transportation Builders Association that driving and talking on the phone is the equivalent of operating a vehicle with a .08 blood alcohol content.

"The motoring public likes to multitask," HAAS Alert's Tom Parbs told the American Road & Transportation Builders Association. "These alerts disrupt the distractions. They make people aware 30 seconds before the traditional advanced warning area of a work zone."

Want to learn more about how to protect your construction crews with digital alerting? Get your copy of Safety Cloud for Work Zones to learn more about how this technology puts the brakes on distracted driving.