Regarding the traffic safety situation on German highways we can realise a positive tendency concerning the severity of accidents for some decades. The safety situation at work zones does not clearly show the described tendency. Indeed the development of accident numbers with third party negligence is stagnating in spite of increasing traffic volumes. However the assessment of traffic accidents with maintenance personnel at highway administrations is not that positive. Because of the risk of death for maintenance personnel being multiple of the one for comparable employees or of the one for road users the authors have focused on accidents with maintenance personnel caused by third parties. With interpretation of former investigations and evaluation of new accident data from some German and one Swiss road administration assumed tendencies should be verified and existing ones shown. In the evaluations a lot of accident patterns and some dependencies on traffic flow are recognizable and therefore measures for accident prevention derivable. The analysis shows clearly, that far the largest proportion of accidents with maintenance personnel happen at the work zone itself during periods with free traffic flow. Also interrelationships between the accident consequences and the location of work sites in the cross section as well as the involved type of maintenance vehicle and the kind of activity are arising. For example work sites on the main lane are more dangerous for the personnel, work sites on the central reserve or the passing lane are more dangerous for the road user. Particular peril points have been detected for self-securing maintenance vehicles on the hard shoulder. With the results of this study public attention will be drawn to the safety of maintenance personnel. Further investigations should look for opportunities of layout improvements at short term road works (A). For the covering abstract of the conference see ITRD E212343.
Abstract