A Sudden Change
of Plans
The following
short accounts describe real work zone crashes that happened in
Iowa. They were adapted from the Iowa Department of Transportation’s
Road Work Zone Safety Education Resource Curriculum for Student Drivers
titled “A Sudden Change of Plans,” and are included
here by permission.
- A 19-year-old
male driver lost control of his car when driving eastbound on an
interstate highway.
According to friends
following his car, he
was speeding very fast, “possibly between 70 and 80 miles
per hour,” just
prior to the crash. His car hit a row of temporary concrete barrier
rails protecting the work zone, and then continued eastbound out
of control
and rolled. The driver was thrown out of the car. He was transported
to a local hospital where he later died.
- At 12:30 a.m., a car driven
by a 16-year-old female was traveling in a work zone on a foggy primary
highway. Two new lanes were being graded
and paved adjacent to the existing road, although no work was under way
at that hour. While trying to pass another vehicle, the young driver
crashed head-on into a pickup. She killed herself and injured the truck’s
occupants.
- A 15-year-old female, with
four passengers in her vehicle, was driving on a county road. Although
the road was closed for construction,
she
had driven around the “Road Closed” barricades. At an intersection
with another county road—this one not closed to traffic—her
car hit a truck that was traveling through. One of her four passengers—who
happened to be her mother—was killed in the crash.
- At 2:30 p.m.,
in a heavy rain and wind storm, a car traveled westbound through a work
zone on a primary highway. It was a resurfacing project
that had shut down for the weekend. The car crossed the centerline of
the roadway and drove into the path of a truck. The vehicles collided
on the south shoulder of the roadway. The car’s front-seat passenger,
a 15-year-old male, was seriously injured. He died later at a nearby
hospital.
- A car carrying five occupants
approached a bridge deck being repaired on a primary highway. The bridge
had been narrowed to a single
lane using
a temporary concrete barrier rail. The car went out of control on the
bridge, started to slide, went airborne and rolled several times, ejecting
three of the occupants—the driver, the front-seat passenger and
a back seat passenger. All had been using only their automatic shoulder
belts. An infant in a child seat and an adult wearing a lap belt in the
back seat were not ejected. The front-seat passenger, an 18-year-old
male, died at the scene; and the driver, a 16-year-old female, died later
at the hospital.
- As a 16-year-old male driver
was traveling on an interstate highway, he reached to put something
in the back seat. Finished with
that, he
turned his attention back to the road and saw that his car was leaving
the open lane and was headed straight toward a construction barricade.
He swerved to try to get back into the correct lane but lost control,
rolling the car and killing an adult passenger—his mother.
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