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Highway Workers Deal With 'Dangerous Environment'

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By RICH SHOPES

rshopes@tampatrib.com

Published: October 25, 2008

Updated: 10/25/2008 01:11 am

TAMPA - Highway workers say they can get used to the whoosh of trucks and cars going down the road but they avoid getting too comfortable on the job, one of the most dangerous around.

"The first time I worked on I-4 my hands were shaking," said Tampa's transportation division manager, Tony Rodriguez. "It's a very dangerous environment."

Rodriguez was reminded of that after the death Sunday of Miguel Mercado, a city traffic count engineer. Mercado, 65, was struck by a pickup and killed while getting ready to lay down a traffic-count tube on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

Joseph Campbell, who was working with Mercado, was injured as well.

About 50 highway workers are killed yearly by passing vehicles at construction sites nationwide, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Florida Highway Patrol says seven state troopers have been struck and killed outside their patrol cars since the 1930s.

"I worry about my guys all the time," Tampa construction engineer Don Cermeno said. "They're always closing lanes and shifting traffic, and you worry about somebody going through the barricades."

Rodriguez said Mercado and Campbell did their jobs properly, donning reflective safety vests and activating the flashing lights on their Public Works truck. But sometimes even that's not enough.

Larry Jones, who supervises 24 Tampa-area Road Rangers, said he tells his crew to constantly be on the lookout for drivers not paying attention or under the influence. "Some things you can't control when people are involved," he said.

In March 2006, Road Ranger Don Bradshaw had finished putting out traffic cones and flares along Interstate 275 near the Howard-Armenia exit when he was hit by a car. He died at the scene.

The state's "move-over law" requires drivers to either slow down or move their cars over for emergency vehicles on the side of the road, but many motorists ignore the law, Road Rangers and others say. Also problematic is the popularity of cell phones and text messaging.

"They go their speed and they don't pay attention to anybody else," said Howard Masters, an Orlando-area Road Ranger who's had a few close calls.

"I'm always looking around. You turn your back for a second and you don't know when somebody will come running up behind you," he said.

Reporter Rich Shopes can be reached at (813) 259-7633.

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