Working on the roads is very dangerous. not only do we have all of the dangers of a regular construction site, we have to deal with thousands 2 tonne plus vehicles, driving past at 50mph+, piloted by utter morons... My current site is on the M4 in the central reservation between Bath and Chippenham, we've been running for 5 weeks, had 7 barrier strikes (when a vehicle hits the steel barrier placed to protect the workers) and one major rtc within our works last week (a lorry hit a car knocking it off the road and down an embankment). Between 2003 and 2008 11 workers were killed and 104 seriously injured in the UK, all of the fatalities were due to a worker being struck by a vehicle. That doesn't sound too bad until you consider that there are only around 4000 people employed on site in highways term maintenance. As for unions, there aren't any to speak of that I know of, however our safety rules and regulations are some of the strictest in the industry. Unfortunately accidents do still happen.
Several years ago, motorway was being upgraded, signs used to say 'kill your speed - not our workers' People did take heed of the sign, you could see the blokes working behind the barriers.
I was going up the M4 the other evening and there was a 40 on to allow workers to cone off a lane for safety, and one TXXT went by at at least 80 just missing one of the guys. Bastard
There is one Motorway worker a month Killed working on Britain's motorways, not all litter picking but on the networks doing various jobs and tasks, I used to manage these guys on the M25 and still do to a certain extent, Really annoys me when we have to get people literally risking their lives because people are lazy gits and cant wait to find a bin.
