Driving change with awareness, technology, advocacy

This week’s episode of Pave It Black marks National Work Zone Awareness Week with an in-depth look at how awareness, advocacy, and innovation are creating safer job sites for road workers.

First, Richard and Brett talk with Mitch Baldwin, NAPA’s Director of Government Affairs, and Cameron Greene, the Vice President of Government Relations for the American Traffic Safety Services Association (ATSSA). They discuss the important advocacy work being done through the Work Zone Safety coalition and highlight recent policy efforts at the federal and state-level that aim to improve work zone safety.

Next, Pave It Black spotlights N.B. West Contracting, winner of NAPA’s 2024 Asphalt Operations Safety Innovations Award, for its development of a custom-engineered safety cage designed to protect paver operators. The N.B. West team share stories from job sites and explain how they developed this award-winning technology.

Whether you’re on the job site, advocating on the Hill, or driving through a work zone, this episode will inspire you to play an active role in protecting the people who keep America moving.

Here’s a preview to the episode. Be sure to tune in to hear how you can get join the campaign to improve work zone safety environments. Listen on your preferred streaming platform.

Policy makers have that ability to make a real impact when it comes to work zone safety. What actions have been effective and where do we need to either get additional support?

Cameron: I think there’s no better way to really drive home the message that we need to protect people in work zones than to have someone out there to experience what it’s like on a day-to-day basis. The other way that we found real success, and Mitch just talked about, having an ATSSA member testify back in February at a T&I Hearing. Having our members and the people who are out there each day bring their message to Capitol Hill, whether that’s through a fly in, through a hearing, through a testimony that both ATSSA and NAPA provide to committees. Getting the message to the folks that we need to find ways to protect workers and having it not come from government relations professionals like myself and Mitch, but from the people on the ground each and every day. We’ve found real success in taking that message and trying to get it to the folks who have the ability, as Mitch mentioned, to write the next highlight bill, which in the process of writing right now. It’s really just trying to take what we’re hearing on the ground and get it to Capitol Hill in any way that we can.

Awareness is good, we’re increasing those fines and enforcing those speed limits better in work zones. But what are other things that could be done?

Mitch: I see it going to work every day. Obviously, I pick on Maryland just because it’s my home State and I’ve lived here all my life. But, there’s some crazy drivers out there and it’s unfortunate. I think what you said about disrespectfulness, I would say it’s disrespectful to go that fast in a work zone. I would also say it’s disrespectful to drive that fast on the highway, just generally. It goes back to the speed enforcement program and automated enforcement is great. I think that it is impactful in hitting people in the pocketbook, but I think that there’s no better deterrent than an actual law enforcement officer making a traffic stop and having that frank conversation with the person that’s speeding through the work zone. Arkansas has done a program where they’re using a hybrid model. They have a speed feedback camera in the front of the work zone, and then the police officer sits at the end of the work zone. If the speed feedback camera reads you’re going too fast, the officer at the other end of the work zone will pull you over outside of the work zone. So, you create that cadence where you’re not having an officer pull somebody over in the work zone, which could create another dangerous circumstance for our workers and the police officer himself. I think it’s more impactful to have the officer do the traditional traffic stop with the person rather than them just getting a letter in the mail saying they owe a couple hundred bucks. You know how it is? it’s just more personal and more humbling,

Are you seeing measurable improvements, in your operations with the efforts of the Safety Committee as well as installing these safety cages?

Tim: As far as the safety cages go, we haven’t had another incident. I don’t even know of another close call or near miss. I hope we don’t have one to prove its value, but I know the mind frame, the mindset of the operators, which Noah can talk to this, is better. They feel safer when they’re sitting in that paving chair, that operator seat.

Noah: You know, I spent over 21 years on a paver and, like I said, I had a lot of close calls. I was actually hit a couple times and, you end up getting hit with the truck mirrors. They sit up high enough that these mirrors hit you, but if you can imagine a truck coming 35, 40 miles an hour, even coming from behind where you can’t see them coming, and you get hit in the elbow by a mirror. It actually breaks the entire mirror off the truck, it’s pretty brutal for what it is. These cages, like I said, I’ve sat in the pavers that have the cages on now, and for sure, it is going to save the majority of these incidents. There may be a fluke thing that still happens where someone gets an injury, but I would’ve loved to have one of these cages for my whole career, you know? I would like to see ’em on every paver that ever comes off the production line because there’s no reason for them not to be there. It’s definitely something that’s gonna save a lot of incidents and it’s gonna help a lot of our operators in the future.