Workers Put Their Lives on the Line

Bright orange signs, traffic cones and flashing yellow lights--all signs of freeway repairs or construction under way--are frustrating signals for most drivers.

But to Albert Miranda, they are markers of danger, and occasionally, as on the San Diego Freeway on Thursday morning, the construction signs are markers of death.

Miranda worked for eight years as one of Orange County’s 140 California Department of Transportation workers, repairing guardrails, replacing signs and placing his life on the line.

“You constantly are looking over your shoulder,” said Miranda, who now works as a spokesman for Caltrans’ Orange County office. “You can’t step in the wrong direction. It’s very dangerous. There’s nothing out there to protect you but the plastic cones and the signs.”

Thursday’s accident, in which a highway maintenance worker was crushed to death when a van traveling more than 80 m.p.h. slammed into a parked maintenance truck, is an example of the hazardous conditions workers face, Caltrans officials note.

The worker’s death was the fifth in Orange County since 1980 and the first this year, according to Caltrans.

The agency reported that no worker deaths occurred in 1989, but there were seven fatalities statewide between 1984 and 1988. That is a decrease over the previous reporting period between 1979 and 1983, when 17 workers died around the state. Between 1974 and 1978, there were 14 fatalities statewide.

Caltrans does not keep statistics on the number of injuries suffered, but Miranda estimated that hundreds of workers have been hurt over the last 15 years.

The decrease in the number of deaths during the late 1980s is attributed in part to the “Give ‘em a Brake” television ad campaign that attempted to raise awareness about the dangers faced by the highway workers.

Another factor in the decreasing rate of fatalities is the introduction of safety devices, such as concrete barriers and light boards that inform drivers of highway conditions, officials said.

Despite the improvements, some workers say the freeways are more dangerous today than they were 10 years ago.

“We used to go into the middle of traffic to collect objects,” said George Hays, who worked on Southern California freeways for 21 years and is now regional manager of the Orange County Caltrans office. “We wouldn’t even think of doing that today. . . . Things are a lot more dangerous.”

Miranda said he knew four of the Orange County workers who were killed.

Two of them died when a truck with bad brakes slammed into them on the Santa Ana Freeway near Lincoln Avenue.

Another was killed on the Riverside Freeway near Weir Canyon Road when a driver lost control of his car after reaching for something on the floorboard, Miranda said.

A fourth was killed on Laguna Canyon Road when a milk truck hit him on Big Bend Curve as the worker attempted to cross the road.

“A lot of drivers just aren’t alert,” Hays said. “They’re looking for something (in the car), thinking about their children, or something like that.”

Officials ranked freeway off-ramps and interchanges as the most dangerous areas for repair work.

“Any time you have a situation where people are making up their minds about where to go at the last minute, you have a hazard,” Miranda said.