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Summary Highway work sites can be dangerous places to work. Ask any person who regularly works in a highway work site, and he or she will agree. Traffic passing by at high speeds, multiple large construc- tion and maintenance vehicles operating nearby, deep excavations, and transporting and maneuvering massive structural elements and amounts of material are some of the many hazardous conditions to which highway workers are exposed. Add in that the work often is performed at night with limited visibility and in extreme environmental conditions and potentially in the presence of impaired or distracted drivers, and it is easy to understand that the work shift for a highway worker is full of sig- nificant hazards. The job of keeping highway workers safe is arguably more difficult than performing highway work and, unquestionably, more important. Keeping workers safe is everyoneâs concern. From the worker who is attentive while at a work site and knowledgeable about the safety hazards present for himself or herself and fellow crew mem- bers, up to the director of a state department of transportation (DOT), who regularly demonstrates commitment to safety and allocates funds to support safety, all employees are participants in safety. It is a collective effort. Consequently, state DOTs devote significant amounts of personnel, time, and resources to ensuring the safety of their employees. Safety programs are established to promote work- ing safely, create safe working conditions, monitor safety performance, and learn from incidents that occur. A well-developed safety program enables a high level of safety performance. Safety programs, together with effective safety controls, mitigate the risk of injury associated with the many work site hazards to create safer work environments. State DOTs that lead the nation in safety performance commonly have innovative and unique safety programs. Developing innovative safety programs requires multiple steps, beginning with identifying and assessing the hazards present and determining the root causes of injuries. In-depth study of incident data is necessary to understand the issues, conditions, and actions that contribute to worker injuries. Once the hazards are identified, assessment of each hazardâs implications is required. Such assessment includes quantifying the amount of worker exposure to the hazards along with the frequency with which injuries of different severity levels are expected as a result of the exposure. These measures can be used to quantify the safety risk associated with a particular work site. Preventing worker injuries requires knowledge of the root causes of incidents. Theories of incident causation have been developed to explain why incidents occur and workers experience injuries. For example, the distractions theory posits that occupational injuries stem from workers being distracted by their focus on work task achievement or external mental worries. For work sites, this theory can be extended from workers to work site crashes resulting from distracted drivers. These crash incidents are one of the more visible types of incidents that occur at work sites. Other incident theories encompass human behavior related to such characteristics as propensity to make mistakes, being absent-minded, ignorance (lack of education and training), having conflicting priorities (e.g., saving time versus being safe), high risk tolerance, and poor risk assessment. According to the prevailing theories, to improve occupational safety and health (OSH) safety programs must affect one or more of the root causes. Means of controlling hazards have been developed and implemented to address the root causes of incidents. For example, the hierarchy of controls provides guidance on the effectiveness and reliability HigHway worker Safety
2 of types of implementable controls. In order of decreasing effectiveness, the hierarchy is as follows: (1) elimination, (2) substitution, (3) engineering controls, (4) administrative controls, (5) behavior, and (6) personal protective equipment (PPE). Current OSH practice promotes a proactive approach to eliminating hazards founded on prevention through design of the physical, operational, and social systems that are present in the workplace. If the hazards cannot be eliminated through design, controls lower in the hierarchy may be suitable, with appropriate consideration given to the corresponding lower levels of reliability and effectiveness. Together all of the controls established and implemented constitute the safety and health program of an organization or project. Important to the process of eliminating worker injuries is the establishment of safety and health programs that accurately respond to and reflect incident and injury claim history. Injury type, fre- quency, severity, and cause are metrics central to understanding OSH needs and performance. This injury incident data, coupled with information about the work task, worker traits, site conditions, and safety culture, enable the development of a plan to address work site safety. Using the collected data, organizational policies can be developed and safety program elements established. The process starts with having sufficient, accurate, and detailed data related to past worker injuries and includes effec- tively using the data to inform the development of hazard mitigation policies and programs. Many state DOTs use OSH data to manage workplace safety. The ways in which DOTs collect, store, and retrieve the data vary from state to state. OSH data may be integrated with incident data, traffic volume data, roadway feature data, workersâ compensation data, or other repositories. Con- nections are needed between OSH data and the causes of worker injuries and fatalities, to minimize exposure to hazards and manage risk. In addition, integrated data sources can help determine trends in injury history, potentially leading to new state DOT policies and procedures in planning, design, construction, operations, and maintenance of the highway system. Recording, assessing, and disseminating information about state DOT safety programs, especially those that are innovative and unique, is the goal of this synthesis study. The study aims to present archival information that enables the development of new or improved policies, programs, and tools that can minimize exposure of transportation workers at construction and maintenance work sites to the risk of injury and death. A focus is placed intentionally on historical data associated with worker injuries and the means by which these data can be collected and used to influence and improve state DOT worker safety policies and programs. The study focuses solely on employees of state DOTs and not on the employees of construction, consulting, and inspection firms and other organizations at work sites. To fulfill the synthesis study objectives, a multistep study plan was followed. The first step involved conducting a comprehensive literature review regarding the topics of worker safety and work site safety. Particular emphasis was placed on the prevalence and causality of injury and fatality incidents for highway workers; the availability of highway worker safety data; existing legal standards and policy recommendations related to highway workers; safety risk and human factors; stakeholders in highway worker safety; and safety program evaluation. The study group supplemented the information found in the literature with an online survey of state DOTs. Survey questions solicited information related to state DOT safety program elements, data sources, and agency perspectives on effective safety policies and practices. From a contact list of the North American Association of Transportation Safety and Health Officials (NAATSHO), survey responses were received from 41 states (82% response rate, one response from each state). The survey responses were used as indicators of innovative and unique safety programs, and the survey was followed up with directed case examples of six state DOTs. The case examples provide in-depth explanations and assessments of safety programs in a handful of states of different sizes and regions in the United States; these may be replicated by other state DOTs. Lastly, six publicly available injury and fatality databases were examined to quantify and com- pare injury and fatality incidence rates. The data in each database were analyzed, and each data- base was evaluated with respect to its benefits and limitations for use in highway worker safety management.
3 An abundance of prior research is available in the fields of traffic and construction engineering; that research provides a comprehensive understanding of the unique challenges at highway work sites. Much of the literature discusses the issues related to vehicles and their effect on safety at work sites. A significant amount of research exists regarding the hazards of work sites from the perspec- tive of the highway workers and the theories of incident causation. An important takeaway from the literature review is that information is available to state DOTs that provides guidance on the factors that affect worker safety and recommended safety program elements. The survey results reveal that the state DOTs are diverse. Each state DOT experiences its own set of issues and remains committed to improving the safety of its employees in highway work sites. With this diversity comes opportunity. There is not one set of safety programs used by all DOTs; each DOT employs the safety programs it perceives to be important, effective, and feasible to implement given resource limitations. From a nationwide perspective, sharing the research and program meth- ods has the potential to be an economically efficient way to improve safety. Although institutional limitations may prevent some DOTs from implementing successful safety program elements found in other DOTs, understanding fellow state DOT programs can be useful in adapting the broad safety ideas to a new organizational context. Analysis of the survey responses reveals that improvements in data sharing and data availability are helpful in enabling states to make data-driven decisions for their own safety programs. Making data-driven decisions requires the availability of data. The publicly available data sources analyzed, when used together, can help to quantify and describe current issues in highway worker safety. Understanding the functionality of each data set allows state DOTs to conduct effective research for developing new safety program elements and benchmarking the effectiveness of existing elements. It is suggested that highway worker safety be examined at national and state levels to understand general trends and causes of traumatic incidents. Each of these data sets has advantages and limita- tions. Although there are benefits to having access to various forms of the data, one of the limitations of this collection of data sources is the difficulty of combining them. They are most easily analyzed independently. It is likely that individual incidents appear in more than one of the archives, but the recording methodology for each program is different enough to make it challenging, if not impos- sible, to isolate a particular incident across multiple data sets. However, although state-specific data are the most useful for the state DOTs, nationwide statistics on highway worker safety can be beneficial for establishing a benchmark with which states can evaluate areas of highway worker safety where improvement is needed. The program elements that are implemented and affect the safety of state DOT employees can be diverse. This diversity contributes to a multifaceted approach that is necessary to reduce the safety risk to highway workers. Examples of innovative and unique safety program elements found in some state DOTs include a near miss reporting program; monitoring of leading indicators; a return-to-work initiative; a work zone executive steering committee composed of state DOT and industry represen- tatives; a design for safety initiative; a data-driven public relations and work site awareness program; and a worker safety idea incentive program. New program elements are commonly developed based on means other than data analytics. Moving forward, additional work is required to identify ways to integrate national and state injury incident data in efforts to improve highway worker safety. Data integration is especially important when tracking the effectiveness of safety program elements. Budgetary restrictions can limit a safety programâs components. Research is needed on how to utilize data to develop and implement a limited number of targeted safety programs for maximum impact, rather than simply trying an abundance of program elements that may not result in the same level of overall effectiveness. To assist state DOTs, research is needed that establishes risk factors for highway workers based on work site conditions and operations. The risk factors can be used to design and manage work operations to minimize safety risk. This type of research could be conducted effectively using experimental tools that simulate worker, driver, and equipment operator interaction in a safe, virtual environment.
