UDOT officials want to avert work-zone accidents

MURRAY — It looked like a scene from a nightmare. John Njord's nightmare.

Njord, the dapper executive director of the Utah Department of Transportation, sat down at his desk late Tuesday morning only to realize freeway traffic was zooming past him.

His phone, computer, pencils and papers had been mysteriously relocated to the middle of a construction zone, sandwiched between an onramp and the I-215 belt route, near the I-15 junction.

Njord could've pinched himself, but it wouldn't have done any good. He wasn't dreaming.

But Njord does have a dream — a full season of construction on Utah's highways without a fatal accident in a work zone.

It was that dream that brought Njord and his office equipment to the sometimes nightmarish world many of his employees inhabit each day.

Along with officials from the Federal Highway Administration and the Utah Highway Patrol, Njord recognized National Work Zone Awareness Week by placing himself in a work environment much more dangerous than his not-quite-so-air-conditioned office in Taylorsville.

"Our construction and maintenance workers who are working on our highways, they live in a different world than most people — one where cars routinely pass them at 60, 70, 80, sometimes 90 miles per hour, just a few feet from where they're working," said Njord, who used a public address system to be heard over the roar of nearby traffic.

In Utah in 2001, the most recent year for which statistics are available, five people lost their lives in crashes in road construction zones. Four of them were drivers or passengers of vehicles traveling through the work zone. A total of 830 accidents occurred in Utah road construction zones that year, resulting in the five fatalities and injuries to 870 people.

Nationally, 1,079 people died in 2001 as a result of crashes in work zones. As recently as 1997, a comparatively low number of 693 died in road work zones nationwide.

UDOT crews will be engaged in more than 75 road-building and maintenance projects this spring, summer and fall. The total cost of about $500 million can't be avoided if Utah's roads are to remain safe and relatively free of congestion.

But one cost that is avoidable, UHP Trooper Kevin Elmer said, is the loss of life in a construction zone.