Your Life Matters. Drive Like It.
That’s the message from the Oklahoma Department of Transportation for a work zone awareness campaign this month. There are plenty of work zones in Oklahoma right now, including several in the Tulsa metro area. One is being set up this morning for a bridge project on the Broken Arrow Expressway at Sheridan.
ODOT Specialist Jerry Ragsdale was fixing a sign when he was launched from a bucket truck hit by a driver experiencing a medical problem. It took him more than a year to recover from several broken bones and come back to work.
Ragsdale said there are plenty of distracted, speeding or otherwise reckless drivers that could do the same thing to him or one of his colleagues.
"You know, in front of Division 8, there’s a memorial with names on it, and we don’t want our name on that memorial, I promise you," Ragsdale said.
Maintenance worker Robert Butler saw an employee killed at a work site by a drunk driver 10 years ago. Butler said it’s frustrating seeing otherwise able drivers put him and his coworkers at risk.
"You can’t yell at them. You can’t honk at them. You know, you see it so often in the course of one day," Butler said. "They’re either eating or reading or on their phones. The phones — everybody has their phone in their lap looking down at it."
Butler said he constantly tells his crews to keep an eye on traffic.
Oklahoma Highway Patrol Trooper Dwight Durant said if worker safety alone can’t convince you to follow the law around orange cones, something else might.
"If you get ticketed in a construction zone and workers are present, the ticket price does go up," Durant said. "It’s significantly more."
