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Good morning Mr. Chairman and members of the
subcommittee. I am DB Hill, III, President of DB Hill Contractor
Inc, Little Rock, Arkansas. My company is a small business
involved in highway construction and I am here today representing
the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC). I currently
serve as the Chairman of AGC’s Highway Work Zone Safety Committee.
AGC applauds your efforts to address safety concerns on our
highways and I commend you for holding this hearing. I am here to
highlight work zone safety, an issue that is particularly
important to the contractors and our employees as we work to
provide safety enhancements, congestion relief and other
improvements to our nation’s roads.
AGC
members feel very deeply that improving work zone safety should be
a top national priority. The number of deaths and injuries
annually in the work zone is unacceptably high and has been rising
steadily over the past several years. In 2000 nearly 1100 people
were killed in work zones and an additional 39,000 were injured.
Too many AGC members can tell sad stories about employees that
have been lost to work zone traffic crashes. This should not be
tolerated. As a result, AGC has taken a leadership role in
addressing work zone safety. Last summer AGC organized a Work Zone
Safety Summit to bring together all those who have a stake in work
zone safety to identify steps that can be taken to reduce crashes,
injuries and deaths. I will discuss the Summit later in this
testimony. Addressing work zone safety is a top priority of AGC in
TEA-21 reauthorization.
AGC believes there should be a national policy
on work zone safety. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), as
the agency with engineering expertise should be the lead agency to
develop the national policy and should include input from state
DOTs and the construction industry. The national policy should
have enough flexibility to allow DOTs the room to be creative in
addressing work zone safety. Three key issues that AGC believes
should be addressed in the national policy are: work zone traffic
enforcement; public awareness and communication; and, positive
barrier separation.
We all realize that as our highway
infrastructure ages and as our population expands, road
construction will continue to be necessary to meet growing needs.
Highway work zones, therefore, will remain a fact of life in our
country. With work zones come dangers to construction workers,
motorists, law enforcement and others.
Much of the roadwork that will be going on in
the future will be to repair, expand and improve existing roads.
As a result much road construction will be done under traffic.
Because of this there will be some inconvenience associated with
construction activity. Motorists must be made aware that there are
increased dangers in the work zone to themselves and workers and
must be convinced to respect work zone restrictions. Therefore, a
key element in work zone safety is impacting the attitudes of
drivers.
A national policy should look to changing driver
behavior in work zones rather than attempting to design work zones
to meet or accommodate driver attitudes. Excellent examples of
successes in changing driver attitudes include drinking and
driving, seat belt use and motor cyclist helmet use. In these
cases, aggressive National awareness campaigns, laws and strict
enforcement have altered driver attitudes. This has resulted in
fewer deaths related to these causes. This same type of approach
should be taken as it relates to work zone safety.
AGC believes that we need to look at creating
incentives for states to pursue work zone safety initiatives. AGC
recommends that Congress create a discretionary fund administered
by the Federal Highway Administration to provide funding
incentives that encourage states to make more wide spread use of
law enforcement officers and devices, such as photo enforcement
and radar, in work zones. AGC also encourages Congress to provide
funding incentives to carryout communications initiatives,
including driver education programs, to make motorists more aware
of work zone dangers and more inclined to drive safely in work
zones.
Even if we are successful in changing driver
attitudes towards the work zone, workers are still placed at risk
because their work place is located next to traffic. Steps need to
be taken to further ensure worker protection. AGC encourages that
the national policy include guidance on the use of positive
separation in work zones. States should be directed to use
positive barriers on high risk projects and funding should be made
available to encourage their use.
Other creative initiatives must be taken to
reduce and hopefully eliminate work zone crashes, injuries and
fatalities. AGC recommends that work zones should be classified
into different categories depending on the level of risk to the
workers and motorists. Although no two work zones are the same,
even within these classifications, certain factors make some work
zones more dangerous than others. Therefore, it is recommended
that projects be classified according to specific factors such as:
average daily traffic, duration of work, complexity of traffic
realignment, length of project, road classification, location,
night work requirements, and anticipated weather conditions.
Specific guidelines on safety for these different categories of
projects should be developed. The guidelines should include policy
recommendations on the use of positive barriers, speed limits, the
use of law enforcement officers and other enforcement devices for
the different categories.
An example of this might be how we set up
traffic control on projects that stretch over great distances.
Motorists are sometimes frustrated that speed limits are lowered
in work zones and as they drive through them they only see work in
a limited area. We should consider looking at the work zone to
determine if it could be set up with subzones within it so that
the lowest speed limits and the strictest enforcement happens in
those areas where workers are present or where there is extreme
danger to the motorist because of specific conditions.
AGC coordinated and hosted a Highway Work Zone
Safety Summit last summer to start the dialogue on how to improve
safety. The Summit was a roll-up-your-sleeves work session that
brought together all of the key stakeholders to develop a national
strategy to address the problem. AGC believes that it is time for
all of the parties with a vested interest in our highway system to
work together to address the problem. We had a tremendous turn out
from the construction industry, including labor and management;
government at the national, state and local levels; highway users,
including automobile and truck drivers; law enforcement
organizations; the insurance industry and other interested groups.
The Summit was designed to develop real
solutions to very real problems. The Summit was a tremendous
success and produced over fifty solid recommendations to enhance
work zone safety. Attached to our written statement is a copy of
the Summit findings and recommendations.
I would like to summarize some of the key
recommendations that came out of the Summit.
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Work zone safety management must be elevated
to high importance among construction companies as it is with my
company, DOTs, and law enforcement.
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ITS technology should be more widely used to
positively impact work zone safety. ITS technology can be used
to warn motorists of what type of work zone is ahead, and
whether there are alternate routes they can use.
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Greater use of trained law enforcement
officers and enforcement. Police presence at work zones does
slow the traffic down.
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Increased use of communications with the
public, trucking industry and workers on work zone safety
issues.
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Driver education programs, including those
for new, experienced, and truck drivers, should include work
zone safety as a specific topic.
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Bid items for safety programs should be
included in construction contracts. The idea is that safety
items should be a priority and the money for the safety items
should be taken off the top of the project cost. This would take
the safety items out of the competitive bid process. Moreover,
it would ensure that all contractors use the necessary
safety precautions, and that there is no penalty for using
additional safety measures if the job warrants it.
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Lastly, DOTs should consider closing the road
as a first option when planning construction activities. This
will make the work zone safer and allow the projects to be
completed much faster.
AGC believes that as a Nation we must address
this growing tragedy. We cannot afford to ignore it. We must
continue to take the steps necessary to protect our workers and
the motorists as we continue the process of improving our highway
system which is so vital to our Nation’s economic well being. At
the Summit and in other discussions concerning work zone safety it
is often suggested that certain safety items be 100% federally
reimbursed. However, this suggestion does not increase the funds
available to any state and does not really provide much of an
incentive for individual states. We must look to create monetary
incentives for states to make greater use of law enforcement
officers and law enforcement devices in work zones, increase
public awareness of work zone safety concerns, change drivers
attitudes towards work zones, make greater use of positive
barriers and develop other practices to protect our workers. For
this reason AGC is recommending creation of a discretionary work
zone safety fund administered by FHWA.
We intend to work closely with the Committee in
the reauthorization process to include work zone safety
initiatives in the final law.
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