At the 2018 Caltrans Safety Summit, Caltrans Director Laurie Berman made a call to action and is implementing three new safety initiatives to end work-zone fatalities in the state.
In the last five years, over 3,000 people nationwide lost their lives in work-zone collisions, and more than 85% of them were the motoring public. Speed was a factor in 28% of those crashes.
One death on the highway system, whether it be a Caltrans employee, a resident or someone visiting the state, is one death too many, a Caltrans news release stated. After a Caltrans worker and four contractors were killed in 2018 in the line of duty, Berman asked, “What do we need to do differently as an industry?” She called a Safety Summit for experts in transportation and construction to develop a plan to help make work zones safer.
As a result, Caltrans is rolling out three new safety initiatives: to reduce work-zone speeds, allow more space between workers and traffic, and expand work windows giving work crews more flexibility to work safer and get projects done faster, which means less impact to the public.
In the first of three videos, Caltrans Public Information Officer Alisa Becerra explains the importance of staying alert and reducing speed in work zones.
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Source: Caltrans
