Caltrans Dedicates New Building to Worker Killed on the Job

With the help of his widow, the California Department of Transportation on Friday dedicated a new office building in Newhall to the memory of a Caltrans worker killed on the job, the first memorial of its kind.

Caltrans bought the one-story, brick-facade building facing the Golden State Freeway last year, just after surveyor Callie Joel Buser Jr. was struck down in Acton by a driver under the influence of drugs.

“I know that this would have made Joel very happy,” his widow, Norma Buser, told a crowd of more than 50 Caltrans workers at the dedication. “If it makes Caltrans surveyors and workers more cautious for their safety and each others’ safety, then this is a good thing.”

Buser said she would continue pushing for a special “safety designation” for road workers because of the hazardous conditions under which they work. The designation would give the survivors of Caltrans workers killed on the job enhanced benefits.

Currently, only families of California Highway Patrol officers killed on the job receive such benefits, Buser said.

The 55-year-old Callie Buser had worked for the department for one year before becoming the 91st worker killed doing Caltrans work since 1982--of whom 52 were Caltrans employees and 39 worked for Caltrans contractors.

Five months ago, Caltrans workers began moving into the newly dedicated building, which would have contained Buser’s office had he lived.

An internal investigation by Caltrans into the fatal accident showed that Buser was in no way at fault, Richard Stewart, a district survey engineer, said. “He was doing everything right,” said Stewart, who had known Buser since he came to work for the department in 1991.

The study, which has yet to be made public, recommends an intensified campaign to increase awareness of safety precautions that drivers must take around road crews, and also supports stiffer penalties for drivers who endanger road workers, Stewart said.

It was Stewart’s idea to have the new office dedicated to Buser “as a consistent reminder to the workers that safety and every life is very important to us.”

On the day of the accident, Buser was painting aerial markers along the right shoulder of the northbound Antelope Valley Freeway near Soledad Canyon Road when he was struck by a pickup truck driven by Scott Ellis III.

It was later found that Ellis, 43, had taken six tablets of acetaminophen with codeine and had smoked part of a PCP-laced cigarette on the morning of the accident, which occurred at 1:05 p.m.

Witnesses had reported that Ellis drove slowly and erratically, swerving into the median and then back across three lanes of traffic to the right shoulder of the freeway, striking Buser.

Ellis, a Palmdale resident who had previously been involved in a car accident while under the influence of PCP, eventually pleaded no contest to a charge of vehicular manslaughter and was sentenced to 10 years in state prison.