Drivers urged: ‘Don’t put road workers lives at risk’

A road junction in Merseyside, UK, has become a hotspot for life-threatening incidents to construction workers, says Highways England. Contractors have reported 23 incidents in two months where their safety has been put at risk by drivers ignoring overnight closures. Road users have driven into roadworks for the £3m improvement project at Switch Island, where the M57, M58 and three A roads all join. One lorry driver travelled through the construction area without stopping - forcing workers to get out
May 23, 2018 Read time: 2 mins

A road junction in Merseyside, UK, has become a hotspot for life-threatening incidents to construction workers, says 8101 Highways England.

Contractors have reported 23 incidents in two months where their safety has been put at risk by drivers ignoring overnight closures.

Road users have driven into roadworks for the £3m improvement project at Switch Island, where the M57, M58 and three A roads all join.

One lorry driver travelled through the construction area without stopping - forcing workers to get out the way quickly - while another incident involved a motorcyclist swerving around a worker. Meanwhile, a 4x4 driver swore at a worker who tried to offer advice before driving away.

Highways England says there are nearly 300 incidents per week of road users driving into coned-off construction areas where road workers are based at motorways and major A roads.

In addition, findings revealed there were over 1,200 incidents in the north-west of England alone during a three-month period last year.

Phil Tyrrell, Highways England project manager for the Switch Island scheme, said the upgrade will offer better journeys through the junction. 

“Drivers who selfishly and illegally ignore the closures to force their way through are putting both their lives and those of our road workers at risk – all to save a few minutes on their journeys.”

The Switch Island improvement scheme includes changes to the road layout and lane markings, new barriers between carriageways, coloured high friction surfaces, better signs and a new 400m shared cycle path.

LED lights similar to an airport runway are also being implemented in the road surface which will light up when traffic lights turn green to help drivers see which lane to follow.

New road signs will be displayed on three new gantries over the A5036 Dunnings Bridge Road, A59 Ormskirk Road and A5758 Brooms Cross Road to help drivers get into the correct lane to continue their journeys.

Urban Traffic Control

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • IAM RoadSmart calls for joined up thinking on road safety
    October 12, 2016
    Action is needed from across government departments to reverse the trend of flat-lining road deaths, according to new research from UK road safety charity IAM RoadSmart, which says reducing these deaths would in turn offer a large saving to the public purse. The new report, Evaluating the costs of incidents from the public sector perspective, is the first attempt to update the formula for death and injury cost figures since the 1990s. It is also the first time anyone has highlighted the costs to the publ
    Read More
  • Rennicks launches Bluetooth traffic monitoring at Traffex
    April 10, 2015
    Rennicks UK, in conjunction with Bluetrace, is using Traffex 2015 to launch a new traffic management system which it says is a significant leap forward in the battle to improve safety and reduce congestion. The system, developed in conjunction with Bluetrace, uses the most sensitive Bluetooth and wi-fi technology on the market to monitor and measure traffic movement from the roadside by connecting to devices inside vehicles. The data is transmitted to a central location to present a clear, real-time p
    Read More
  • Siemens signs partnership agreement with OptaSense
    March 12, 2015
    A new two-year traffic monitoring partnership between Siemens and OptaSense, a QinetiQ company, has been agreed to further explore the performance and potential commercial deployment of OptaSense Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS), a fully networked traffic monitoring solution for the UK traffic industry. The partnership follows successful road monitoring trials by OptaSense in the UK and overseas comparing the performance of the DAS system with conventional inductive loop technology to provide information
    Read More
  • Enforcement ensures equity for toll road users
    January 25, 2018
    All-electronic tolling boosts traffic flow but introduces the tricky question of enforcement. Workable solutions are starting to emerge. Enforcement is an essential part of tolling and one of the most important ways for a mobility agency to keep faith with its investors, its community stakeholders and the vast majority of its users. It can also be one of the most unpopular and contentious things a toll authority has to undertake. If tolling is about paying for the roads, then everyone has to pay their
    Read More

Highlighted Content