As the holidays approach, so approaches the season when many of us pack ourselves into cars and drive for anywhere between a few hours to a few days to visit our friends and loved ones. Spending a lot of time on the road can be stressful, especially if you’re in a hurry to get somewhere, and it certainly doesn’t help your mood when you run into the occasional construction zone which manages to slow the speed of traffic down to a crawl. Still, even if you’re lucky enough to pass through a construction area without having to slow down, you should do so anyway.
Life On The Road
Imagine what it must be like to be a road construction worker. Not only do you have the same heavy machinery and dangerous materials to contend with as any other kind of construction worker, but you also have people speeding by your workplace only feet or even inches away from you, and all you have to keep yourself safe is a set of traffic cones or plastic pylons. In both cases, they serve more as polite warnings than any means of actually stopping a car that wants to veer off-course.
Driving a car is one of the most dangerous things any of us do on a given day. All across America, police officers file millions of accident reports each year, and each year millions more occur which are too minor for the police to notice. But while drivers and passengers inside cars and trucks are largely protected from harm thanks to seatbelts, airbags, and other safety measures, pedestrians aren’t so lucky. This could mean a twisted ankle or a broken leg to someone struck by a car at relatively low speeds, but at highway speeds there’s little chance of getting away with just a single break.
For the years between 2003 and 2013, Florida ranked second in the nation for most road worker fatalities, and roughly half of these deaths were pedestrian workers who were struck by a moving vehicle. So no matter how slow the highway gets in a construction area and no matter how bored and frustrated you feel as you wait for all the line-jumpers to finally merge into the one available lane, just remember that you’re not the person you should really worry about when there are men and women out repaving the road.
Other Do’s And Don’ts
As far as driving through a construction zone goes, most every rule about driving in general applies, but they count double when you have fewer lanes open than normal. That means you shouldn’t drive intoxicated or otherwise impaired, and you shouldn’t drive distracted, whether that’s thanks to talking on a cell phone, texting, or otherwise paying attention to anything that isn’t the road in front of you. It may be tempting to give yourself something else to do while you wait for the traffic in front of you to start moving again, but if you don’t pay enough attention you may hold up the people stuck behind you or you might even panic for a moment and jump forward into the bumper of the car in front of you.
If you do wind up in an accident on the road, whether in a construction site or not and whether you’re a driver or a road worker, you may want to contact an experienced personal injury lawyer as soon as you can.
With a free case review, a lawyer can give you a professional opinion on whom they suspect is most at fault in an accident and can suggest how much your case may be worth in terms of how much the at-fault party’s insurance should pay. And, because the insurance company will often try to convince you to settle for less, a personal injury lawyer can also negotiate on your behalf and get you a better deal even after legal fees are considered.
So if you’re injured in or around St. Petersburg, Florida, give the St. Pete Lawyer a call and we’ll do everything we can to get you the compensation you deserve.
