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After a series of work-zone crashes, what can be done? · Talking Michigan Transportation

• 0:07
  Jeff Cranson: Hello, welcome to the Talking Michigan Transportation Podcast.
• 0:11
  Jeff Cranson: I'm Jeff Cranson.
• 0:16
  Jeff Cranson: I spoke with Greg Brunner, who is the Chief Operations Officer at the Michigan Department of Transportation, about a poignant message that he sent out to operations staff around the state this week because of a series of incidents in work zones that involved fatalities of drivers and or people who were working on a site.
• 0:38
  Jeff Cranson: He issued a somber reminder of everything that's involved in construction and the need for everybody to be diligent about safety and what it means, and he expanded on that in our conversation and also talked about what developing technology could mean to make a difference and make everybody safer.
• 0:58
  Jeff Cranson: So I hope you enjoy the conversation.
• 1:02
  Jeff Cranson: So Greg Brunner, the Chief Operations Officer at MDOT.
• 1:06
  Jeff Cranson: I mentioned in the introduction why this topic is particularly important to him, to give you I think I've talked about this before in the podcast, but to give people a sense of his commitment to work zone safety, he has a full orange suit that he wears on the work zone safety awareness kickoff each year and gets a lot of comments and the whole idea is to draw attention to it and I think it works.
• 1:36
  Jeff Cranson: Greg, thanks for taking time to talk today.
• 1:39
  Jeff Cranson: I was really struck by a message that you sent out to staff operations staff around the state in the wake of a series of incredibly tragic events.
• 1:51
  Jeff Cranson: That one involved a former MDOT engineer who worked for a consulting engineering company, a very close call in Monroe County.
• 2:01
  Jeff Cranson: Unfortunately, a truck driver died there and several MDOT workers from the Monroe Garage were injured.
• 2:07
  Jeff Cranson: And then another incident, not actually on the road but work related to the road, where a contractor was killed.
• 2:16
  Jeff Cranson: All of this really hit home and you sent out a very poignant, I think, and somber message to the staff.
• 2:24
  Jeff Cranson: So can you talk about that and what prompted that?
• 2:27
  Gregg Brunner: Sure.
• 2:27
  Gregg Brunner: Again, thanks for having me, Jeff, and, as you know, with my orange suit and everything else that I do, I'm always willing to talk about safety, so I appreciate being here today.
• 2:36
  Gregg Brunner: But yeah, as you mentioned, at MDOT, it's been a hard few weeks when it comes to work zones, with a few losses that we've had here and a few really close calls that had happened out on our roadways.
• 2:48
  Gregg Brunner: I just kind of sent that message out just to remind people how critical it is to take safety into everything we do on a daily basis, to pretty much always remember to stay alert and kind of keep an eye on traffic, no matter what you're doing, whether you're in a work zone or driving or other types of things.
• 3:04
  Gregg Brunner: Safety is not really something you can let slack, something we need to kind of always stay on guard with.
• 3:10
  Gregg Brunner: I know, kind of as you get into the middle of construction season and you're dealing with traffic on a daily basis, my biggest concern is I don't want people to become complacent when it gets to safety in terms of what they do.
• 3:23
  Gregg Brunner: And again, it's not just if you're out working in a work zone or even working in the garage or even in the office day to day.
• 3:31
  Gregg Brunner: There's different things you do to keep an eye on your own safety.
• 3:34
  Gregg Brunner: You know whether it's driving to work, driving through construction zones or anything else.
• 3:38
  Gregg Brunner: Just simple reminders, even to just wear a seatbelt, keep your eyes on the road.
• 3:43
  Gregg Brunner: Whether you're driving normally or in a work zone, because you know even some of these queue crashes that happened to our friend and former co-worker those weren't quite to the work zone yet.
• 3:54
  Gregg Brunner: Traffic had backed up and you know, at the end of the day, these incidents we saw in the past couple of weeks with our folks, they came down to people not paying attention is what it was other people on the roadway.
• 4:06
  Gregg Brunner: So those investigations are still ongoing.
• 4:10
  Gregg Brunner: We don't have all the details yet but for the most part we have things set up from a standard safety standpoint.
• 4:16
  Gregg Brunner: So what I've kind of asked our folks to do, not only is to focus on safety, but to look out for each other while they're out there too.
• 4:23
  Gregg Brunner: If you're driving through a work zone and notice something that may not look right, feel free to give that office a call to kind of talk through things.
• 4:28
  Gregg Brunner: You know, if your co-worker is doing something that doesn't work right, or a contractor or anything else you know, don't hesitate to speak up, because just simple words like that could be the difference that really impacts someone's life down the road.
• 4:41
  Gregg Brunner: You know lots of these things that have happened, whether any of the crashes that happened on our roadways, no one expects those to happen on their way to work or wherever they're going that day.
• 4:50
  Gregg Brunner: So anything we can do to keep each other safe and keep an eye on each other goes a long way.
• 4:55
  Gregg Brunner: So I just wanted to send out that message, kind of as a reminder for our folks that, no matter what's going on, everybody that's out in the work zone, every vest, every hard hat, every orange barrel that's a person, one of our friends, one of our teammates and, again, someone that wants to go home at the end of the day and see their family.
• 5:11
  Gregg Brunner: So again, that's kind of what my message was aimed at is just to a general reminder to keep each other safe and look out for what we're doing on a daily basis
• 5:20
  Jeff Cranson: I think what you said, um, in your message that probably was most effective and really struck me was safety is a mindset, not a checklist.
• 5:31
  Jeff Cranson: It's about being present, engaged and always looking out for one another.
• 5:36
  Jeff Cranson: It's really easy to lapse and forget and take these things for granted, but really as much as we want to focus on the workers and what they're doing and wearing the proper gear and the right safety gear, all those things.
• 5:49
  Jeff Cranson: Distracted driving you know it's been a problem for a long time, as we've talked about many times.
• 5:57
  Jeff Cranson: The more ways we invent to make our vehicle safer, the more ways we invent to distract ourselves, and that really took off during the early days of the pandemic.
• 6:06
  Jeff Cranson: We know that there were more incidents of distracted driving, more incidents of people driving under the influence, people not wearing seatbelts, extreme speeds, all those things.
• 6:15
  Jeff Cranson: The only way I think we're ever going to solve this is through technology that helps us further human-proof the system, because humans are always going to make mistakes.
• 6:27
  Jeff Cranson: There's a lot of companies, there's a lot of research going on with technology and I hope that someday, and I'm interested in your thoughts about what we're already doing, we get to the point where at least commercial vehicles, big heavy vehicles could have a warning that goes off.
• 6:43
  Jeff Cranson: I mean much more than just a pop-up on your Waze or your Google Maps, but something in the cab that tells the driver, hey, traffic is stopped one mile ahead, something like that.
• 6:55
  Jeff Cranson: How do you think we're doing developing that kind of thing?
• 6:58
  Gregg Brunner: That's something, again, that takes time to get into every vehicle that's out on the roadways, but we are performing lots of pilots and, again, when you start talking about work zones and people paying attention, there's some things we're doing more on the static standpoint in terms of increased signing and other types of things.
• 7:14
  Gregg Brunner: But also what we've within the last few years, what we started doing is adding temporary rumble strips to a lot of the lead-ins to our work zones, just so that, if people are doing something distracting, it gives them the idea to look up and pay attention to what's going on, because, as you know, when it starts talking to work zones, things can change quickly.
• 7:32
  Gregg Brunner: But I think really looking forward, like you had mentioned, is how can we use technology to keep things safer?
• 7:38
  Gregg Brunner: There are things we are doing right now, as well as many things we're piloting, in terms of how to make that happen.
• 7:44
  Gregg Brunner: Some of the things we are doing now on quite a few projects where we anticipate traffic backups due to construction are what's called a queue detection system.
• 7:54
  Gregg Brunner: Where we actually, and we're on projects where we anticipate a longer queue length due to work zones, we actually put out sensors and cameras out there.
• 8:05
  Gregg Brunner: That will, once they notice traffic is starting to queue up, that they'll send alerts to changeable message boards in advance of that to warn people of queues ahead.
• 8:14
  Gregg Brunner: You know traffic queue in one mile or two miles ahead, those types of things.
• 8:18
  Gregg Brunner: So there's technologies like that we're already doing right now, but there's other things we're looking at as well.
• 8:24
  Gregg Brunner: More recently, what we started doing for projects that were let this spring are including a spec in our plans calling for every arrow board we use in work zones to be a connected arrow board.
• 8:33
  Gregg Brunner: And what that means is that it sends out a feed through what's called the work zone data exchange, and that's kind of a standard language that was developed through um, ITE and some other groups to look at, kind of a consistent message that any vehicle would be able to interpret, adapt or put into their on-screen navigation system to alert drivers of something ahead.
• 9:00
  Gregg Brunner: So again, once they send out that message through the work zone data exchange, that can be incorporated into vehicle technology to let them know that there's a work zone ahead.
• 9:09
  Gregg Brunner: So those are things that are really going on right now.
• 9:11
  Gregg Brunner: But looking farther down the road, we're looking at other types of pilots.
• 9:15
  Gregg Brunner: Recently, one we did was called Safe Zone, which where we received a grant from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to put more cameras and sensors out in our roadways that would then send messages in-vehicle messages to commercial vehicles, kind of like you had talked about early on.
• 9:33
  Gregg Brunner: So the technology is getting there.
• 9:36
  Gregg Brunner: It's just a matter of having operators to ingest that equipment or things installed in their vehicles to be able to allow that to happen.
• 9:45
  Gregg Brunner: So again, like anything with those large technology transitions, those take time, but we're looking at that technology, doing many different pilots right now to be able to incorporate things for the future, just to make things safer for everybody.
• 10:00
  Gregg Brunner: Beyond that, we are also working with another vendor on a pilot, where we're installing sensors into our vehicles where once we flip on our lights for in the work zone, whether they're the construction bubble lights that we have on our trucks once those go on, it sends out a message that is ingested by Stellantis vehicles, Volkswagen vehicles, Google, Waze, and other things, just to warn that there's a construction zone ahead or work zone ahead or whatever else.
• 10:29
  Gregg Brunner: And where I see this being very helpful is on some of the emergency response or other types of vehicles, that kind of work outside of the work zones whether they're bridge inspectors or electricians or other types of things, where there may not be a lot of work zone signings set up in advance because they're only out there a very brief time.
• 10:47
  Gregg Brunner: But again, the intent is to get those into those in-vehicle navigation systems to give people that alert that something's going on, to pay attention and then, most importantly, to stay safe.
• 10:56
  Jeff Cranson: Stay with us.
• 10:57
  Jeff Cranson: We'll have more on the other side of this important message.
• 11:05
  MDOT Message: Have you ever ridden with someone who turns down the music when they're driving through an unfamiliar situation?
• 11:10
  MDOT Message: What do you do to make sure you're alert when approaching a work zone?
• 11:13
  MDOT Message: Everyone should slow down, pause your conversation and follow posted traffic signs.
• 11:20
  MDOT Message: Do whatever it takes to avoid distraction.
• 11:23
  MDOT Message: Keep Michigan Work Zone safe for construction crews and your passengers.
• 11:32
  Jeff Cranson: We haven't done an update in a while.
• 11:35
  Jeff Cranson: I've talked about this in the podcast in the past.
• 11:37
  Jeff Cranson: It took us a long time.
• 11:39
  Jeff Cranson: It was a laborious process but eventually paid off with the legislation that will allow for some automated enforcement with safety cameras in work zones.
• 11:51
  Jeff Cranson: We know that the other states, I don't know what it is now 23 to 25 that have done this have seen a difference.
• 11:58
  Jeff Cranson: It's actually helped reduce those kinds of crashes.
• 12:04
  Jeff Cranson: I have no doubt that some of the ones that we're talking about, if people knew, if they were told by signs ahead of time that you're going to be, your speed is going to be monitored and you could be cited if you're speeding when you go through this work zone, that's going to get people's attention.
• 12:17
  Jeff Cranson: All the research shows, especially with younger people, that fear of dying doesn't affect them because they think they're invincible.
• 12:26
  Jeff Cranson: But if you tell them it's going to hit their wallet, that does get their attention.
• 12:29
  Jeff Cranson: So where are we at with that?
• 12:32
  Gregg Brunner: Sure.
• 12:32
  Gregg Brunner: So it was last year that was actually signed into law to allow us to be able to incorporate work zone safety cameras into our projects.
• 12:41
  Gregg Brunner: So where we are right now is we're looking at other states in terms of some of the proposals they had sent out, but the plan is to hire a vendor that specializes in this technology to be able to incorporate into our work zones.
• 12:54
  Gregg Brunner: There are some specific criteria within the law in terms of where this can be used.
• 12:59
  Gregg Brunner: So it can only be used in certain work zones around the state that are there over 30 days, aren't behind barrier wall, a few other things that we're working through right now.
• 13:11
  Gregg Brunner: But again, the intent is to hire a contractor to be able to perform that.
• 13:15
  Gregg Brunner: And the way it is set up is it's not like other speeding tickets that you would receive.
• 13:21
  Gregg Brunner: The way it's set up is it's only it hits your pocketbook, not necessarily points associated with it.
• 13:27
  Gregg Brunner: So the first violation, you would just get a written warning in the mail.
• 13:31
  Gregg Brunner: The second violation would be $150 fine and the third and subsequent violations would be civil infractions no greater than $300.
• 13:46
  Gregg Brunner: So that's kind of how things would look in terms of fines that would go out from these work zone safety cameras.
• 13:49
  Gregg Brunner: But again, what I've always said is my hope is that we put these out and no fines are issued because people are driving the proper speeds out there through our work zones to keep everybody safe.
• 13:58
  Gregg Brunner: Not only the workers, but those driving through, those in queues, everyone else.
• 14:01
  Gregg Brunner: And the pretty amazing thing we've seen in talking to other states, in particular Maryland, what they saw when these rolled out was an increase of almost 90% of vehicles that traveled at the speed that they were supposed to be out there.
• 14:17
  Gregg Brunner: So again, it's what we want is the goal of this is not for citations but overall for driver compliance.
• 14:24
  Gregg Brunner: Again, we just want to keep folks safe, because once you keep folks traveling about the same speed, that's really improved safety throughout the entire stretch of roadway there.
• 14:35
  Jeff Cranson: Yeah, I think it's good to emphasize that this is not at all about speed traps and money grabs.
• 14:40
  Jeff Cranson: This is completely as you said, if it gets people to slow down and there aren't any fines, that's great.
• 14:46
  Jeff Cranson: That's the ultimate goal and that money would only go to help manage the program.
• 14:55
  Jeff Cranson: It's not going to be some kind of moneymaker for anybody.
• 14:59
  Jeff Cranson: So I don't think we can emphasize that enough.
• 15:01
  Jeff Cranson: And Sean Duffy, who's the US DOT Secretary, is very interested in safety.
• 15:06
  Jeff Cranson: He says it's a top priority and he's also interested in technology.
• 15:10
  Jeff Cranson: So my hope is that some of these things can get traction at the federal level.
• 15:15
  Jeff Cranson: And I know it's a bit of a dilemma because you can say you're about safety but then you're also dealing with people who see it from a civil libertarian viewpoint and various ways that people are being tracked.
• 15:28
  Jeff Cranson: But I would hope that ultimately, the imperative to get people to slow down when they're driving through you know, somebody's workspace and thinking about that person, not as just a hard hat, but as a mother or father or sister or brother, just like the rest of us that that can actually make an impact someday.
• 15:49
  Jeff Cranson: What's your hope on the horizon for where we're at, I guess I don't know, five years from now, 10 years from now.
• 15:56
  Gregg Brunner: Well, I hope really, the Smart Work Zone technology takes off, where we've done quite a few pilots, different things to send out notifications to vehicles.
• 16:04
  Gregg Brunner: But you know, beyond the notifications are there things we can do to incorporate to get cars to slow down or other types of things to maintain safe distances when you're driving through work zones or to mitigate queues, those types of things.
• 16:18
  Gregg Brunner: So again, we've looked at a lot of the static things out there, but again, working with technology providers and the automotive industry to be able to improve just safety overall.
• 16:28
  Gregg Brunner: Again, it's going to have to come through technology, though, I think, beyond just some of the static things we've historically done.
• 16:33
  Gregg Brunner: So I'm hopeful that things work out.
• 16:36
  Gregg Brunner: And again, that's kind of what keeps me motivated, though, when it comes to safety every day.
• 16:41
  Gregg Brunner: We still have about 1,000 people dying on our roads annually.
• 16:44
  Gregg Brunner: So again, that's what keeps me motivated every day when I come to work is to keep pushing that number down to zero.
• 16:52
  Jeff Cranson: Well, and going to the message and the reason that we started this conversation in the first place, I know you've done a lot of speaking and a lot of discussion with other people other DOTs and people at the federal level about mental health and how you know the challenges, the unique challenges to that.
• 17:11
  Jeff Cranson: I mean every job has stress and certainly there's all kinds of causes of mental health, but to think about the workforce that has to work in this kind of environment with the inherent dangers all around it definitely takes its toll.
• 17:26
  Jeff Cranson: So anything new you want to say about that?
• 17:31
  Gregg Brunner: No, I just think kind of the biggest thing that people may not realize when it comes to mental health is that it really impacts the construction industry more than many others that you would believe.
• 17:43
  Gregg Brunner: Just due to not only the long hours but again the stressful situations trying to deal with contracts and fixed price and schedule and everything else.
• 17:52
  Gregg Brunner: But in the back of your mind also noting that traffic's still traveling by you at excessive rates of speed, you know feet away from where you're trying to concentrate to get your job done.
• 18:00
  Gregg Brunner: So again that's a big part of it that people may not think about, but again it plays a role in everything else we do and again my goal is just to keep folks safe.
• 18:10
  Gregg Brunner: I want everyone to get home at the end of the day to their family, friends and loved ones.
• 18:14
  Jeff Cranson: Yeah, well said.
• 18:15
  Jeff Cranson: Well thanks, Greg.
• 18:22
  Jeff Cranson: Thanks for taking time to talk about this again and for doing what you can to get the word out.
• 18:24
  Gregg Brunner: Thanks for having me, Jeff.
• 18:25
  Gregg Brunner: I appreciate it.
• 18:25
  Jeff Cranson: I'd like to thank you once more for tuning in to Talking Michigan Transportation.
• 18:28
  Jeff Cranson: You can find show notes and more on Apple Podcasts or Buzzsprout.
• 18:32
  Jeff Cranson: I also want to acknowledge the talented people who help make this a reality each week, starting with Randy Debler, who skillfully edits the audio, Jesse Ball, who proofs the content, Courtney Bates, who posts the podcast to various platforms, and Jackie Salinas, who transcribes the audio to make it accessible to all.