Beyond the Barriers: Road Construction Safety Issues From the Office and the Roadside

Kumar Debnath, Ashim; Banks, Tamara; Blackman, Ross · 2019 · Crossref

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe100162

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Summary

This study investigates safety management in road construction and maintenance zones in Queensland, Australia, addressing the complex interface between workplace health and safety regulations and road traffic practices. Motivated by a recent increase in roadworker fatalities and injuries following significant flood-related rehabilitation works, the research aims to understand how safety policies translate into practice. The authors utilize a three-level conceptual framework—regulatory, organizational, and operational—to analyze the barriers to effective safety control, particularly given the difficulty of isolating workers from the general public and the conflicting pressures of maintaining traffic flow versus ensuring worker protection. The methodology involved a multidisciplinary approach synthesizing data from three distinct sources. First, researchers reviewed 22 policy and procedure documents from three major industry partners to assess organizational safety cultures and risk management protocols. Second, they conducted semi-structured interviews with 24 subject matter experts, including safety managers, engineers, and supervisors, to identify safety-critical positions and management tasks. Third, they performed on-site interviews with 66 road construction personnel, ranging from traffic controllers to laborers, to gather data on perceived hazards and incident experiences. This design allowed for a comparison between high-level policy intentions and ground-level operational realities. The findings reveal significant disconnects between regulatory frameworks and operational experiences. Policy analysis showed substantial overlap in organizational procedures but also critical gaps, such as the lack of safety considerations in employee recruitment and inconsistent incident reporting processes. Expert interviews highlighted that competitive tendering pressures often lead to the minimization of safety costs, while a lack of evidence regarding the effectiveness of specific safety measures hinders decision-making. Worker interviews identified driver behavior as the primary source of risk; 38% of participants reported public vehicle intrusions, and 29% cited rear-end crashes. Common causes included speeding, distracted driving, and non-compliance with signage. Workers also reported feeling unsafe due to driver aggression, working in wet conditions, and inadequate supervision, noting that operational hazards like driver frustration were rarely addressed in organizational policies. The study concludes that while organizational and regulatory levels focus on achieving "zero harm" through formalized controls, operational levels accept inherent danger due to unpredictable traffic. The translation of safety policy into practice is hindered by cost pressures, insufficient evidence of measure effectiveness, and the priority placed on minimizing public disruption. The authors argue for greater collaboration to standardize safety approaches and emphasize the need for objective evaluations of safety interventions, particularly regarding driver behavior modification. The findings suggest that improving roadwork safety requires bridging the gap between management perceptions and worker realities, potentially through enhanced public education and more rigorous assessment of on-road safety treatments.

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• work zones