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Highway Safety
It’s mid-winter here in the heartland, and with the inclement weather comes the usual rash of auto accidents. With everything being done to assure our safety, I’m here to tell you it’s not working. Hi-vis vests, new traffic laws, all are good, but the motoring public just will not slow down in our work zone. I have a few ideas of my own, but would like to throw this out to you for comment; what can be done to make things safer? I’m getting ready to write my state representative and am always open to fresh new ideas.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by T.J. on
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We shut any highway road down completly tell the patient is in the ambulance and will shut at least one lane down on any other road. We think the vests are working great, but you still need good traffic control to help make the vests work.
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Permalink Reply by Kristy Oxholm on
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Check out the VFIS website and look at their Highway Safety Course. This is not a problem that can be solved by simply putting a vest on. We need to set up safe work zones and keep out exposure to traffic to a minimum!
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Permalink Reply by Chief 29 on
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We typically block lanes with apparatus on both sides of the incident and or shut the road down completely. As I have said before the Hi-Vis Vests are a great add to our gear but they do not protect us from the motorist that is not paying attention in the first place. I would much sooner replace body parts on a truck than on one of my guys or even worse. Scene safety is and always be in our hands and it will not matter what law gets passed it will still be an issue that we have to deal with.
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Permalink Reply by Tony P on
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I'd be interested in what your ideas are Trainer - like you we have our share of stupid motorists!
We use the old standard things. Block off lanes or the whole road using vehicles and traffic cones. Use electronic 'flares'. Wear safety vests. Try to have someone standing out to wave traffic down - and they are always reminded to never stand in front of traffic, to never look away from the oncoming traffic. Or for preference have police doing that job...
There is talk here about changing an exisiting road law which requires people passing road works to reduce speed to 40 km/h (about 26 mph) by including any place that has emergency workers on the road. I'm in favour of this change, we'll get the sensible people to slow down and if there's much traffic at all that will force the others to slow as well. However, one of the biggest problems we have is with people slowing down to have a look at what's going on (the ghoul factor I call it) and they then of course pay no attention to what's happening in front of them...
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Permalink Reply by Trainer on
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Well Tony, I have several ideas most of which either involves a baseball bat or a paint gun, but I don’t think they will fly. We have the reduce speed thing plus heavy fines if they hit someone, but tickets are few and far between. I’ll give the cops some leeway here reduced numbers plus the fact that they are usually busy with accident stuff. TV cameras with automatic alert tied to radar guns would be a nice start, issue the ticket by mail. Now I’ll take that 1 step farther and have mandatory 1 month suspension of driver’s license plus maybe $500 fine of which we should get some of. With that in place I would estimate 1 year and no speeders.
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Permalink Reply by Paul Montpetit on
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If it is an emergency scene close the roadway down.....if it is a daily work zone such as DOT working...here in New York they double all fines for work zones and the State Police routinely monitor the zones....Stay safe......Paul
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