SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — A road construction zone can be a dangerous place for workers and drivers.
The South Dakota State Department of Transportation said that in 2023 there were 229 crashes on state highway work zones and another 163 crashes on local highways.
According to the SD DOT, the main cause of all road construction work zone crashes is distracted driving.
In the U.S., the main types of work zone fatal crashes are rear-end collisions, collisions involving a commercial motor vehicle and speeding, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. From 2021 to 2022, crashes involving speed increased from 30% to 34%.
In 2021, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration advised drivers of large commercial trucks to slow down in work zones, obey the flaggers, pay attention and follow other advice. A National Work Zone Awareness Week urges all drivers to slow down in all road construction zones as well as to pay attention to directions and signs and to not drive distracted.
Some of the crashes are fatal crashes or injury crashes.
In 2022, there were two work zone fatal crashes and two people died in them, according to the National Work Zone Safety Information Clearinghouse. Going back to 2013, the state had five fatal crashes in which six people died.
On Tuesday, a road construction flagger was killed in a crash on U.S. Highway 14, two miles east of Wessington.
Based on the clearinghouse data, South Dakota did not have an at-worker death in a road construction crash from 2013 to 2022. But there was another work zone pedestrian death in 2020 during the same time frame. A similar death happened in 2017.
The description of an at-work pedestrian fatality is a “Pedestrians identified in FARS (Fatality Analysis Reporting System) as being at work is a construction/maintenance/utility worker or a transportation worker (e.g., maintenance workers, safety service patrol operators.)”
Across the U.S. from 2003-2020, 2,222 workers were killed at road construction sites for an average of 123 per year, according to Bureau of Labor statistics. From 2013 to 2022, most road workers on foot who died in construction areas were hit by vehicles, according to the National Work Zone Safety Information Clearinghouse.
From 2020 to 2022, 52% of those who died were not in road work vehicles while 26% were in vehicles.
While workers die in road construction zone crashes, drivers and passengers are also killed or injured, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. In 2022, 742 drivers and passengers were killed in work zones. That was a decrease from 784 in 2021.
The number of road construction crash-related deaths has been declining from 135 in 2019 to 94 in 2022. South Dakota had two fatal work zone crashes in 2022 and 2021 and three in 2020 and 2019 and one each year from 2014 to 2018.
