Published: April 02, 2009 10:57 pm      

Construction zone safety rally to stretch from Greenup to Floyd

GREENUP — Orange barrel season is just around the corner and state highway officials want to make sure everyone, motorists and road workers alike, makes it through alive and uninjured.

That is why a fleet of Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, Kentucky State Police, and other agency vehicles will promenade south on U.S. 23 from Greenup to Floyd County Monday, to underscore the importance of safety in construction zones.

“We hope it will be a reminder that thousands of highway workers will be out in force this year and that their lives are in our hands,” said Boyd Sigler, director of highway safety programs for the Kentucky Office of Highway Safety.

The warm weather construction season brings hundreds of highway department workers and contractors onto Kentucky roadways at a time when traffic counts are up because of vacation travel, said Allen Blair, a spokesman for District 9 of the highway department.

In Boyd and Greenup counties alone, there are several paving projects and bridge replacements, along with pothole patching, sign installation, guardrail repairs and other work, he said.

Awareness is the key, Blair said. At 60 mph, a car is traveling at 88 feet per second. When it passes a warning sign 1500 feet from a work zone, the car is 17 seconds away, he said.

The rally will start at 9:30 a.m. Monday at the department’s Greenup County maintenance facility on U.S. 23 and will proceed to Ashland for a press conference at the former Bluegrass Grill parking lot and public information session. Then it will continue down U.S. 23 through Lawrence and Johnson counties, with similar stops at the junction of U.S. 23 and Ky. 32 and at the Johnson-Floyd county line.

The highway safety reminder is important because there were 835 work zone fatalities in the United States in 2007, the latest year for which national statistics are available. Kentucky had three fatalities in 2008, down from six the year before, Blair said. Awareness initiatives may have contributed to the downward trend, he said.

Workers may appear to be most vulnerable, but nationally, 85 percent of work zone fatalities are motorists, Blair said. Motorist mishaps most often are rear-end and fixed-object collisions.

Officials will be sending reports via Twitter during the rally. To follow, go to http://twitter.com/WorkZoneSafety or http://twitter.com/KYTCDistrict9.