Overview

Every year, the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) embarks on hundreds of construction projects across the state and that does not even include the numerous maintenance activities that are conducted everyday to keep our highways safe.

With every construction zone comes equipment, workers and even daily changes in the road and alignment you may be traveling. As a result, it is critical that you do your part to make the cone zones safe. Lower speed limits, flaggers and police enforcement are all used to help keep work zones safe, but motorists still need to drive responsible to keep not only our workers safe, but yourself as well.

Here are some work zone facts to put work zone safety into perspective:

• 85% of work zone fatalities are motorists and occupants
• In Colorado last year (2011), preliminary statistics show there were 830 work zone crashes, resulting in 96 injuries and 10 fatalities, many of which could have been prevented.
  
• About 600 people die and more than 37,000 people are injured in work zone crashes nationwide.
  
• In a typical five-day work week, an average of seven motorists and one highway worker are killed nationwide.