April 25, 2012
In an effort to reduce the number of on-the-job fatalities among highway workers, the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) held a vigil Tuesday to remember the 23 men and women who lost their lives while working on road construction projects over the past year.
According to the Denver Post, this is the eighth year that CDOT has hosted the ceremony that’s being held in conjunction with National Work Zone Awareness Week, which began Monday. One man who lost his father to a drunk driver in a construction zone eight years ago told of how the accident had inspired him to create an organization dedicated to promoting construction zone safety.
Statistics show that 600 people are killed and another 37,000 are injured each year in our country in work zone accidents. That includes the 830 work-zone crashes, which injured 96 people and caused 10 deaths in Colorado last year.
A spokesman for the Colorado State Patrol, Captain Jeff Goodwin, added that most construction zone accidents could be eliminated if drivers simply kept their eyes and minds focused on the road. He added that drivers should, “Just slow down, give highway workers and patrol officers a little bit of buffer so we can do our work.”
The Denver Car Accident Lawyers with the McDivitt Law Firm would like to remind Colorado’s motorists of the importance of staying vigilant when driving through work zones by slowing down and watching for workers.
