The challenge? Motorists want the improved roads, they want extra lanes, but they do not want to sit in the snarling traffic jams construction work so often causes.

By Dan Rafter

Jerral Wyer knows that the challenge his state of Texas faces is far from unique: The number of cars traveling the state’s highways has reached record levels, placing huge strains on the roads on which motorists rely to get to and from work. The state’s construction crews must work harder than ever to keep these roads in good shape and are often called on to widen existing highways to make extra room for all these new commuters.

The Texas Department of Transportation, where Wyer works as safety section director for the occupational safety division, is meeting this challenge by ordering more nighttime work for its construction crews. The theory is that night work disrupts fewer motorists and allows construction crews to complete projects in less time. Wyer doesn’t expect the amount of after-sunset work in Texas to lessen anytime soon.

Texas is far from alone. Night work is a growing reality for highway departments across the country. When crews work late into the evening, they can close more lanes than they can during the day. And, the hope is, by working both in the daytime and nighttime hours, they can complete projects faster, saving money for cash-strapped states.

Problem is, some believe that working at night can also be dangerous. Motorists can’t see as well and are more likely to be driving while tired or intoxicated. Workers, too, may not be used to the odd nighttime work schedule. They may be sloppier, and less safety-conscious, than usual.

“There is a lot of night work, and we’re seeing more and more of it all the time,” Wyer says. “We’re just trying to meet the transportation needs of the motorists within the state. We’re trying to build and maintain our roads in the least intrusive way possible. We want to keep the traffic flowing as much as we can. Of course, we don’t want to lower our safety standards to do it.”

That is the juggling act contractors face when tackling night work.

The good news is that the quality of the lighting and safety equipment available for contractors—light towers, reflective clothing, backup warning signals—is at its highest level. Manufacturers are continually working, too, to bring new safety products to the industry and to enhance the effectiveness of existing equipment. The bad news? If crews don’t take advantage of this equipment or don’t know how to use it properly, all the technological advancements won’t mean a thing.

“People are getting better at working in the evening. They are thinking about safety. But that doesn’t mean there still aren’t mistakes made,” says John Golden, national sales manager for Whelen Engineering Co., a national manufacturer of safety lights and backup warning devices for construction vehicles. “Sometimes people mount the warning lights on their vehicles incorrectly so that they’re not pointing toward the traffic the way they should be. If they’re mounted on an angle, they might be shooting their warning light over the heads of traffic so that drivers don’t see the vehicles until it’s too late.”

Mistakes like these cause accidents, some fatal. It’s important, then, for contractors to take the steps necessary to protect their crews at night. And, from what manufacturers, highway department officials, and industry observers say, it’s a skill that contractors are going to need for the foreseeable future.

High-visibility garments are a must for construction workers at night.

This doesn’t mean, though, that daytime work is more dangerous than evening work. Such raw accident numbers, actually, wouldn’t mean much of anything. To truly gauge the safety of night work, analysts would have to first quantify how much night work contractors perform. They’d then have to study the percentage of accidents relative to the amount of night work and compare it to the same percentage relating to daytime work.

That’s complicated. Better evidence that nighttime work poses risks comes from studying the comments of contractors and construction-industry experts. It’s clear that these folks are concerned about how night work impacts safety. The National Cooperative Highway Research Program, for instance, is currently running a study comparing accident rates in day and night work zones, though the numbers and conclusions from this study are not yet available. These results are expected by the end of 2006.

At the same time, the American Road & Transportation Builders Association during last April’s National Work Zone Awareness Week released statements urging motorists to drive slowly and stay alert when passing through nighttime road construction zones.

“Most road construction workers have very legitimate concerns about their safety because of the danger associated with nighttime construction work,” says Brian Holmes, executive director of the Maryland Highway Contractors Association, in a written statement. “Reduced visibility, motorist fatigue and greater exposure to drunk and drugged driving are just some of the major hazards facing workers at night.”

Officials with the association say that proper use of strategic lighting, visible police presence, and stepped-up speed enforcement are three keys to boosting nighttime safety.

Brad Sant, vice president of safety and education with the American Road & Transportation Builders Association, is one of those construction industry pros who is worried about nighttime safety. Studies such as the one now being conducted by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program are important, he says, to help contractors understand just how dangerous—or not dangerous, depending on the study’s results—that nighttime work is. Once armed with the statistics, contractors can then make better decisions on safety equipment, lighting, and training, Sant says.

No matter what results researchers find, though, nighttime work will continue, Sant says. The economic pressures are too great.

One dangerous aspect of night work is both motorist and worker fatigue.

“The vast majority of construction work on highways and roads now is done on rehabilitating existing roads. That means that almost any work going on now will have an impact on traffic, day or night,” Sant says. “At the same time, our roads are now more congested than they ever have been. Vehicle miles are continuing to grow. We are seeing more construction on existing roads that are more heavily traveled than they have been in the past. As an end result, more people are impacted by construction, so you start to get these political pressures on departments of transportation and others to minimize that traffic and congestion. There is more pressure to do this work in non-peak hours. Those hours happen to be at night.”

Sant offers several suggestions for contractors hoping to protect their nighttime crews. First, construction workers should always wear high-visibility garments. Even if workers are operating in an area isolated from motor-vehicle traffic, they should wear this clothing so that the operators of other construction vehicles, whose visibility is reduced by nighttime conditions, can see them clearly.

Workers should place temporary traffic control devices—cones or barrels—closer together than they would during daytime work, Sant says. Nighttime drivers may see a gap between cones as an exit. By placing cones closer together, crews avoid this confusion and the potential it brings for accidents.

Portable lights and light towers are a must for nighttime work. This is obvious. But crews don’t always use this lighting properly. Crews should be sure that they are not accidentally aiming their lights at the eyes of motorists, Sant says. This can temporarily blind drivers.

Sant recommends that crews invest in transitional lighting when working at night. Consider a nighttime driver: He is driving down a dark road. His eyes have adjusted to the lack of unnatural light. He enters a work zone, and suddenly the road is flooded with bright, intense light. It can take time for the driver’s eyes to adjust. During this time, a confused, perhaps sleepy, driver can cause a serious accident. Better, Sant says, for crews to set up low-level lights leading to the construction zone and then gradually add brighter lights as drivers get closer to the work area.

It’s also important for contractors to realize that they have more to worry about than motorists. Sant says there is about a 50/50 split among the causes of construction-site accidents: Half the time, accidents are caused when motorists hit workers. The other half, workers are injured by falling off equipment, suffer sprains and broken bones from operating their machines, or are hit by other construction vehicles.

Most of these other accidents have little relation to nighttime work and are just as likely to happen during the day as they are in the evening. Contractors must take the same precautions to prevent them in the evening as they would during the daytime hours.

“What we try to make people who are doing night work cognizant of is that both the motorists and the workers are more likely to have problems with fatigue,” Sant says. “The visibility issues are important, of course, but the workers also have the potential to have more accidents because they are tired and are working an off schedule. They are not getting enough sleep in the daylight hours. We also have concerns that the motorists are more likely to be impaired when driving at night. There is a higher rate of drivers who are fatigued or who are using drugs or alcohol. It has the potential to be a more hazardous situation, especially when drivers are dealing with a roadway that is not performing as most motorists anticipate.”

As night work becomes more common, are construction workers and contractors paying more attention to safety? Sant says they are, that workers are better educated when it comes to protecting themselves at night. Many states have even written laws requiring certain safety measures when crews are tackling nighttime work.

That doesn’t mean, though, that construction crews wouldn’t rather work normal hours, Sant says.

“Most workers would prefer not to work at night,” Sant says. “But there is an understanding that this is work that we’ll be seeing more and more. It’s an unhappy situation but one that is demanded on the roadways.”

The department also offers its own nighttime training course, Wyer says. The course offers tips on how workers can place warning signs and light towers so that motorists can drive safely through the zone. It also explores the type of garments nighttime workers should be wearing and offers suggestions on how crews can remain alert while working odd hours. The course is available to all workers who will be tackling nighttime work, Wyer says.

The department also emphasizes employee visibility, Wyer says. It requires that employees wear hardhats with reflective markings and a Class 2 safety vest when working at night. If crews are working at night in areas that are not protected by median barriers, Wyer says, they are required to wear Class 3 garments.

“We’ve been very fortunate to have had very few incidents where our employees have been hit at night. That, of course, is our number-one concern,” Wyer says.

Like other highway department officials across the country, Wyer expects the amount of nighttime work to only increase in the coming years.

“There are a lot of different areas across the state where we have nighttime activities taking place,” he says. “In our large metropolitan areas, places like Houston, Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio, we have a lot of heavy construction taking place. Most of those cities require nighttime activities because of the heavy amount of traffic they see. We are trying to get the jobs done and completed. We’d like to get them done ahead of schedule. It’s easier to do that at times when the traffic volumes may be a little lighter.”

Jack Lockwood, director of sales and marketing for the company, says that the construction industry is doing a better job now of using lighting properly to boost the safety of nighttime work. This includes the key step of aiming their lighting down on the job, not down on the highway. If workers aim their lights improperly, they create blind spots that can result in accidents.

One issue that does concern Lockwood, though, is the growing number of contractors who rent lighting equipment instead of purchasing it. Often, contractors don’t put their best operators on rental equipment. These unskilled workers, then, may aim the light improperly. Lockwood recommends that contractors not simply dump their rented lighting equipment on their worst crew members but consider safety and instead require that trained and skilled workers be in charge of lighting nighttime work zones.

It’s also important that construction workers provide routine maintenance of their lighting and warning equipment.

“You don’t want your light towers to flicker or go out,” Lockwood says. “It’s important the people keep their engines serviced. They have to clean the fuel and change the oil. They have to change the oil filter. If you have a clogged fuel filter or air filter, then the engine will starve. When the engine starts to sputter, the lights start to go out. It’s important, then, to keep that engine serviced and maintained.”

Lockwood also recommends that contractors when renting lighting equipment make sure to investigate the rental yard. This way, contractors can gauge whether rental yard staffers do a good or a poor job of maintaining and servicing the lighting equipment that they rent out.

“Some rental yards do a better job than others in maintaining the equipment,” Lockwood says. “When a contractor owns a light tower, you know that it will be pretty well maintained. Sometimes, though, rental yards get so busy that they don’t pay as much attention to servicing as they should. Then it becomes a problem.”

Lights should be angled in a way that will not temporarily blind motorists.

Warning lights on construction vehicles and electronic arrow boards are other key components of nighttime safety. Arrow boards mounted on rooftops, for instance, stand out in a nighttime work zone, increasing the overall safety of an area.

“Safety really is a big issue,” says Silas Campbell, sales coordinator with Denver-based Wanco Inc., a firm that manufactures arrow boards and other highway safety and traffic control products. “It’s becoming more of a mandate from the states and federal government. When you’re putting construction workers on a highway and you have vehicle traffic moving at highway speeds, you have to make sure that those workers are safe. People have died in these work zones. Hopefully, that can be eliminated. That would be ideal.”

To be truly effective, safety products, whether they’re to be used at night or in the day, must be easy to operate, say industry observers. If safety equipment is overly complicated, construction workers may misuse it or not use it at all.

“The majority of our products are used by people without a great amount of secondary education,” says Don Koglmeier, owner of Fleet Industries, a company that provides strobe lights, halogen warning lights, and backup alarms. “We’re dealing with guys who don’t want to relearn everything to put a strobe on. A key part of the business is to make this equipment as simple as possible.”

Aiming light towers so blind spots are avoided, ordering crews to wear reflective safety vests, installing warning lights and arrow boards on construction vehicles, and educating workers on how to stay safe at night will reduce accidents. But the sad truth is that all the training and preparation won’t completely eliminate the potential for accidents or injuries.

“We see it all the time with properly rigged vehicles, with properly rigged lights. People, for whatever reason, still drive into them,” Koglmeier says. “There is no way you can protect people perfectly. If the wrong person drives up to you for whatever reason, there is going to be an accident. We’ve seen people running street sweepers, driving 5-miles-an-hour along the side of the street, and they get hit. It’s kind of odd. No matter what you do, you’re never fully protected. It’s why people put so many lights on their vehicles.”

“There aren’t many jobs where you can say you’ll always be 100% safe,” said Joyce Forcelle, international sales manager with LeCenter, MN–based Winco Inc., a manufacturer of generators and light towers. “I do think it can be frustrating. As a construction worker, you always have to be thinking ahead; you always have to be thinking about what the other guy might be doing to put you in harm’s way.”

There is some good news for construction workers, though. Some observers say that equipment and awareness have improved so much during the years that nighttime work is actually little riskier than is any form of highway construction.

Jim Bryden, a highway safety engineer, is working as a consultant on the nighttime safety study now being conducted by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program. He expects that the numbers, when released at the end of 2006, will show that nighttime work is inherently no more dangerous than is daytime work.

The reason? There aren’t as many vehicles on the road at night, and construction crews have greater freedom to close more lanes than they would during the day.

“As long as you take the necessary steps to set up a good work zone, if you have ample lighting and enhancements, I suspect that nighttime work is every bit as safe as is daytime work,” Bryden says. “In some circumstances, night work might even be safer. But there is a caveat to that: You have to set up the work zone properly.”

Bryden admits, of course, that there are dangers associated with night work: reduced visibility, tired workers, impaired or sleepy drivers. But it’s important for contractors to accept that nighttime work is now a permanent feature of the construction industry and to take the steps necessary to create safe nighttime work zones.

“There is no question that night work is what we are facing,” Bryden says. “There is no other way we can do all this construction work. We can’t close all these lanes in the daytime. It’s almost to the point where it’s difficult to do that at night. You can’t do it until 11 p.m. or midnight, and then you have to have all the lanes open again by 5 in the morning. You still have a limited number of hours to get this nighttime work done. Night work is the only way we can get this work done.”

Dan Rafter is a technical writer based in Chesterton, IN.

GEC - November/December 2006

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