U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has announced a 17% drop in work-zone fatalities and injuries as National Work Zone Awareness Week kicked off. The week was kicked off by national highway safety leaders at a ceremony on April 7 near the nation’s capital.
“I am encouraged by the decrease in fatalities and injuries,” LaHood said. “With $27 billion in economic recovery funds fueling thousands of highway construction and repair projects nationwide, drivers must be more careful than ever.”
Work-zone fatalities and injuries have fallen over the last 10 years. The 17% drop in 2007, the most recent year for which data are available, represents the sharpest single-year percentage decline since the week’s inception in 2000. The drop continues a multiyear trend of increasingly safe roads. There were 835 fatalities in 2007, down from 1,004 fatalities in 2006.
Four of every five victims in a work-zone crash are motorists, not highway workers as is commonly believed.
The event, which highlighted the progress made over the past decade, was held only yards away from the Humpback Bridge Replacement Project on the George Washington Parkway, one of the East Coast’s most congested commuter corridors.
National Work Zone Awareness Week is a national campaign conducted at the start of construction season to encourage safe driving through highway construction sites. It is observed nationally by state, local and federal transportation officials the first week of April, which coincides with the start of highway construction season.
For more information on National Work Zone Awareness Week, visit http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/wz/wz_awareness.htm.
