By Brandon Barger
TheStatehouseFiles.com
INDIANAPOLIS—Dennis DeMoss remembers the phone call he received after the accident happened.
“It’s five o’clock in the morning. Just a normal day going to work,†said DeMoss, a superintendent with Rieth-Riley Construction Co. and the founder of the Road Construction Awareness Corp.
His son, a highway construction worker like himself, was killed by a truck on May 9, 2014 while tearing down a work zone on I-69. The accident killed another man as well.
DeMoss spoke Tuesday in front of the Interim Study Committee on Roads and Transportation and urged lawmakers to take action to protect workers in highway construction zones. The committee was discussing legislation that would place automated cameras in work zones to record and ticket speeders to prevent crashes.
There have been 28,747 crashes in INDOT work zones between October 2009 to the present, according to the Indiana Department of Transportation. Of those, 4,485 resulted in injuries and 124 were fatal. Most of those accidents are caused by speeding in the work zones.
Sen. Blake Doriot, R-Goshen, worked in construction and has experienced the near-misses caused by speeding cars.
“I was almost involved in an accident, being a surveyor out there. Someone lost control, distracted somehow. We stepped over the barrier wall and the car struck 50 feet from where we were standing,†Doriot said.
The cameras are supposed to be placed at different work zones to track the speed of the people driving. If a driver goes more than a certain number of miles over the speed limit the cameras will take a picture that will be sent to the police. A ticket will be issued through the mail.
There are currently five states that use the photo system that is being proposed in Indiana—Washington, Oregon, Illinois, Maryland, and more recently, Pennsylvania. In Maryland, 7% of drivers drove 12 miles per hour or more over the posted speed limit in a work zone. After the automated photo system was implemented, that percentage dropped to 1%.
Lawmakers discussed the Pennsylvania model to explain how the system would work. In that state, the cameras are only allowed on projects funded by the federal government and they take pictures of the license plates of the speeding cars if they are 11 miles per hour or more over the posted speed.
Some who oppose the use of cameras in construction work zones believe that it would be an issue of privacy, but Doriot disagrees.
“If you think about it, a state trooper, he sees them, he’s going to get their license plate and it’s going to be recorded,†Doriot said. “So, what’s the difference?â€
Doriot also said that the cameras should be put on both federal funded projects as well as the state-funded projects in Indiana.
DeMoss told the committee that he would give his retirement to have the camera technology 10 years ago to prevent the accident that took his son’s life.
Do not look to the joke of a law that PA passed. Read this below and pull up the National Motorists Association. Speed cameras have failed elsewhere, made errors, and there were more crashes, or no effect.
If you want to suggest some policies which can actually improve safety in work zones here are a few:
1.Cease putting stop signs at the ends of acceleration ramps on interstates. It is sheer madness to pull out from a dead stop, especially for a tractor-trailer.
2.Set speed limits to the 85th percentile free-flowing traffic speed. The absurdly low limits create unsafe rolling roadblock conditions.
3.End the conflicting-sign syndrome. Why does a sign say one thing, then 50 feet later one says the opposite?
4.Stop workers from walking out in front of cars.
5.Do all night work on interstates. Fewer people=fewer crashes.
6.Post signs for the zipper merge concept. This means you use TWO lanes until you merge into single lane. Otherwise you will get people backed up miles before they need to, which causes congestion, and causes people to dart into the open lane, refusal to allow merging, road rage, etc. Should always try to maintain two lanes, at least, too.
———–
Work zone speed cameras are unlikely to improve safety in Pennsylvania for several reasons. The actual results will be mostly collecting profits above the cameras own high costs. Many freeway speed limits are already under-posted, arbitrarily set well below the safety-optimum 85th percentile speed of free flowing traffic under good conditions. When those too-low limits are further reduced in work zones, the resulting limits are far below the safe travel speeds. This leads to uneven and less-safe traffic flows as a tiny percentage of drivers comply with the improperly-low limits but most don’t comply, leading to more conflicts between vehicles and bad behaviors like tailgating and excessive lane shifts.
Most freeway work zones have workers behind concrete barriers and not at risk from passing cars. Drivers clearly see the workers are safe. Michigan has a better idea. Freeway limits are usually 70 mph and are sometimes reduced to 60 mph if warranted in work zones. Then the signs say “45 Where Workers Presentâ€. This forces drivers to look for workers that might be at risk and slow down near them. But if all the workers are behind concrete barriers or way down in a wide median away from the traffic lanes, the 45 limit does not apply. This method also eliminates inactive work zones from being used as speed traps.
Are these the same devices that made a slew of errors in other places?
Comments are closed.