The Illinois Department of Transportation kicked-off National Work Zone Awareness Week 2018 with a presentation at the Jane Byrne Interchange active construction zone yesterday. The interchange is the junction between the Dan Ryan – Interstate 90, the Kennedy – Interstate 94, and the Congress Parkway – Interstate 290 in Chicago. Named after former Chicago Mayor Jane Byrne, the interchange is notorious for its traffic jams. The presentation was led by Illinois Department of Transportation Secretary Randy Blankenhorn. This year’s theme is “work zone safety is everybody’s responsibility.” “In an age where we rely on so many different modes of transportation, literally everyone has a role to play,” Blankenhorn said. “The same basic, common sense rules apply across the board. You could save a life, and more than likely, it’ll be your own. Four out of five work zone fatalities are not our workers, but drivers traveling through work zones.” Blankenhorn told the crowd: put the phone down, pay attention – conditions can change quickly, move over for workers if possible, slow down and obey work zone speed limits. Under Illinois law, a first offense for work zone speeding is $375. A second offense will cost you $1,000. Hitting a worker in a construction zone comes with a fine of $10,000 and 14 years in prison. From 2012 to 2016 there were 5,191 work zone crashes on average each year. Of the 177 work zone fatalities in Illinois from 2013 to 2017, only 6 were worker fatalities.Paul Pisano with the National Highway Administration echoed Blankenhorn’s remarks at the presentation. “More than 37,000 people died on U.S. roads in 2016, including 765 people in highway work zones,” Pisano said. “..That’s occupants and drivers in vehicles, that’s pedestrians, that’s bicyclists, and of course, that’s our workers. It underscores a very simple point that we all need to embrace: work zone safety is everybody’s responsibility.”
