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Agencies and their Data to Assess Law Enforcement Surveillance Impact on Construction Zone Safety

Abstract

Maintenance and construction programs are arguably one of the most important functions of states DOT’s (as represented by the percentage of the budget invested). On the other hand during the construction period, there are temporary traffic disruptions, which increase the number of accidents with associated deaths and injuring thousand of people every year. Therefore, several states have taken a proactive role in implementing special measures in construction work zones to reduce number of accidents. One of these special measurements is the increase of law enforcement surveillance in construction zones. The work presented herein is part of a project funded by the Mississippi Department of Transportation. This paper focuses on the agencies involved in collecting and storing the data as well as the data used in the analysis. The collection of information from the agencies followed a descriptive research methodology. The results presented in this paper demonstrate the importance of inter-agency collaboration. Furthermore, this paper provide an example of data collected, archiving mechanism and retrieval procedures of each agency involved in this project. Therefore, the content of this paper could be used as an educational experience for students and junior professionals that are trying to create the foundation for similar studies.

Introduction to Construction Zones

Maintaining and upgrading the United State’s aging highway system requires a number of construction zones at any given time. These construction zones temporarily negatively impact traffic flow and deteriorate safety conditions impacting both road users and construction workers. Construction zone accidents involving motorists account for 70% of the total highway accidents. Motorists suffer approximately 700 fatalities, 40,000 injuries, and 52,000 property- damage-only accidents, at a total cost of $6.2 billion/year [Mohan & Gautam, 2002].

Significant effort has been placed to further understand the potentially hazardous nature of work zones and several facts about work zones have been documented such as 1- Eighty-five percent of those killed in work zones are drivers or occupants, 2- Rear-end crashes are the most common kind of work zone crash, 3- Roads with speed limits of 55 miles per hour or greater account for the majority of fatal work zone crashes in 2001, 4- More than 50% of all fatal work zone crashes occurred during the day in 2001, 5- More than twice as many fatal work zone crashes occurred on weekdays as on weekends; and 6- Fatal work zone crashes occurred most often in the summer and the fall [FHWA, 2003].

Furthermore, construction zone’s fatalities are on the rise and are likely to continue climbing across the nation as departments of transportation continue repairing and upgrading the United States’s aging roadways [Safe Roads 2003]. This is particularly compounded in the State of Mississippi due to an all time peek volume of construction zones as well as the 1987 four-lane highway program and TEA-21 [Young 2001]

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Sulbaran, T., & Marchman, D. (2007, June), Agencies And The Data Provided To Assess Law Enforcement Surveillance Impact On Construction Zones Paper presented at 2007 Annual Conference & Exposition, Honolulu, Hawaii. 10.18260/1-2--1647