For Caltrans Crews, Danger Is Always Near

For Keith Cummings, the jitters come when he is cruising slowly along the freeway in a maintenance truck, acting as the rear defense against drunk or distracted motorists who might swerve into the Caltrans street sweeper a few yards ahead of him.

He has reason to feel jittery. In September, the driver of a pickup truck fell asleep at the wheel on the San Diego Freeway near Inglewood and slammed into the back of Cummings’ maintenance vehicle. Cummings suffered back and wrist injuries that sent him to the hospital and put him out of work for seven months.

When asked why he does it, the Caltrans employee shrugs. “My job is to take the hit for my crew,” he said Thursday as he prepared for another shift on a freeway crew in South Los Angeles.

Since 1924, 155 Caltrans employees have been killed and hundreds more have been injured in the line of duty, most of them victims of errant motorists who have plowed into work crews on California’s freeways.

On Thursday, Caltrans officials marked April as “Highway Workers Memorial Month” and held a ceremony to honor the dead workers and the survivors of similar freeway accidents, including Cummings. About a dozen Caltrans employees and California Highway Patrol officers attended the event at a Caltrans maintenance facility in South Los Angeles.

The centerpiece was a makeshift memorial of 155 orange traffic cones arranged in a diamond formation. It was a low-key but fitting memorial, Caltrans officials said, because the cones often are the only thing separating maintenance crews from deadly freeway traffic.

“Cones and signs protect our lives,” said Caltrans spokesman Presley Burroughs.

According to Caltrans figures, the numbers of workers injured and killed have been cut in half since 1982, when Caltrans began its “Give ‘Em A Brake” advertising campaign to urge motorists to drive with caution around freeway maintenance crews. This year, Caltrans launched another safety campaign called “Slow for the Cone Zone.”

Still, on average, two Caltrans workers die each year while on duty. Their names are added to a plaque at Caltrans headquarters in Sacramento.

Caltrans maintenance and landscape workers say nearly all of them have frightening tales of either being hit or nearly being hit by drunk, distracted or sleeping drivers. It’s a stressful job, they say, that pays as little as $24,000 a year.

The most recent incident took place Wednesday night when a car driven by a suspected drunk driver hit another motorist who then ran into the back of a maintenance truck on the Harbor Freeway in South Los Angeles. The Caltrans driver, Kris Blanton, who suffered minor injuries, has been hit three times in the last 20 months, according to Caltrans officials.

Alex Guzman, a landscape worker for three years, was supervising a freeway landscaping crew early one morning last year on the Harbor Freeway near Carson when the driver of a tractor-trailer fell asleep at the wheel. The big rig jumped the shoulder guardrail and came to a crashing halt only a few feet from Guzman.

“My spirit basically jumped out of my body,” he said. “It’s hard to pay attention to that kind of thing and still do your work.”

Caltrans officials say one of the most dangerous jobs on a maintenance crew is driving what they call a “shadow truck,” a large orange truck with a specially designed metal box mounted on the back bumper to absorb the impact of a collision. The trucks, including the one driven by Cummings, follow the street sweepers to protect them. Members of each maintenance crew take daily turns driving the shadow truck.

The sweepers and the shadow trucks usually are sent out at night to avoid creating traffic gridlock. Flares are dropped behind each sweeper to warn motorists.

Shadow truck drivers are strapped into specially designed seats to protect against head and neck injuries. Nonetheless, most collisions result in serious injuries because motorists usually are traveling at more than 60 mph when they hit the slow-moving trucks.

Eva Ross, a 10-year Caltrans veteran, was driving a shadow truck one night two weeks ago on the San Diego Freeway in Signal Hill when a sports utility vehicle slammed into the back of her truck and overturned in the air. The driver was injured but survived, while Ross suffered back, arm and leg injuries that have forced her into a desk job at Caltrans. Her doctors don’t know when, if ever, she can drive a truck again.

“We literally play in the streets,” said Curtis Domio, a Caltrans supervisor in Hollywood. “The stakes are high.”