SOUTH PORTLAND, Maine — Maine Turnpike Authority employees wore safety yellow and orange on Wednesday to draw awareness to National Work Zone Awareness week.
The effort is an annual spring campaign held at the start of construction season to encourage safe driving through highway work zones. The key message is for drivers to use extra caution in work zones. Highway Work Zones typically require drivers to slow down to 50 mph. Speeding in a work zone in Maine carries double the original penalty.
According to the Maine Turnpike Authority 2019 budget, the MTA has 73 full-time highway maintenance employees.
Since 2016, there have been 138 reportable crashes, 57 injuries, and 3 deaths in Turnpike work zones alone. One of those three deaths was Jeff Abbott, who was killed when a person speeding through a work zone hit him.
"One minute he was standing there, and the next minute, he wasn't," said Bill Thompson, a foreman with the MTA who was working with Abbott at the time.
Thompson and Abbott were close friends, attending school together, and later working together.
"Not a day goes by out here that I don't think about it, which is okay because he was worth remembering, and it keeps me on my toes. We never want to see that happen again."
Thompson said as he was cleaning up the cones at the crash scene, a passing driver gave him the middle finger.
"I just lost my friend. It didn't matter to this guy. He didn't know it. He probably didn't know it, but I was inconveniencing him. He was going to be a little bit late getting home to dinner that night. My friend didn't get home to dinner that night."
Thompson said radar-equipped signs that post drivers' speeds have been effective in getting people to slow down.
The latest data from the Maine Department of Transportation shows 26 of its workers were killed while doing their jobs in the past 60 years.
The area on the Turnpike between exits 44 and 48 is full of construction work due to multiple projects. In addition to the 73 full-time highway maintenance workers the MTA employs, MTA staff say there are about 100 of their workers spread across the Turnpike on a given day.
Nationally, worker fatalities in work zones decreased from 2016 to 2017. Driver fatalities increased by 3 percent over the same period.
As always, speeding in a marked work zone carries double the original fine, even if workers are not present.
Thompson said Abbott's death was the catalyst to get the memorial to fallen Turnpike workers built outside the MTA headquarters. Thompson is in his 34th year working for the MTA.
Work Zone Awareness week ends on Friday.