The Freeway Firing Line

Rick Harris’ work uniform is a neon orange vest and a hard hat. But considering the maniacs he faces every day, he might be better served in Kevlar body armor, a motorcycle helmet, football pads or all of the above.

That’s because Harris and his fellow Caltrans maintenance workers are on the firing line--the routine targets of bottles, battery acid, jars of body fluids and other missiles. All are flung by passing motorists.

A few years ago, someone threw a full beer can at Harris. The Budweiser landed short, striking him in the foot.

But the worst injuries of all, Harris insists, are the verbal ones. Aimed at his mother.

“I don’t like that,” said Harris, a 22-year veteran of the California Department of Transportation. “I only have one momma.”

Agency officials keep no statistics on such attacks, but say they are increasingly frequent. The culprits are frazzled motorists who blame highway workers for the region’s mounting traffic delays.

For Caltrans workers, the frustrating irony in these attacks is that some motorists see Caltrans efforts to improve and maintain the freeways as nothing more than a source of roadway obstructions and traffic headaches.

Almost every Caltrans worker has a story about being the target of an insult or projectile, often flung in anger.

Not long ago, someone tossed a chocolate eclair at Caltrans superintendent Pam Dennis as she supervised a maintenance crew on a Los Angeles freeway. The errant pastry missed and instead struck her truck windshield.

“They flip us the bird all the time,” Dennis said with a shrug. “They see us as the bad guys.”

The problem has grown in direct proportion to the increase in freeway congestion, prompting the agency in 1998 to arrange for California Highway Patrol officers to park near Caltrans freeway closures to dissuade angry motorists from lashing out.

State lawmakers have tried to put the brakes on such attacks by passing a bill in 1996 that doubled fines for misdemeanor crimes in freeway construction zones.

But CHP officers can’t monitor every closure, so most of the time Caltrans workers are on their own.

“At least once a week people throw things at us,” said Michael Miles, deputy district director for maintenance in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

This is not a problem limited to traffic-choked Southern California. Bay Area drivers also have been known to lose their cool on the roads.

“During rush hour it gets real ugly,” said Bob Haus, a spokesman for the district office in San Francisco. “Sometimes we have to call in the cops to protect our workers.”

Authorities don’t know how many Caltrans workers have been hurt by such attacks, but they say most injuries are minor scrapes and bruises.

The most serious injuries come when motorists ignore the orange cones and signs and speed onto closed offramps and freeway lanes where maintenance crews are working.

Since 1924, 155 Caltrans employees have been killed and hundreds have been hurt by drivers who have plowed into work crews on freeways.

Caltrans workers say many of those deaths and injuries are caused by motorists who are angry that their regular route has been closed.

“Nobody takes the time to learn an alternate route,” Dennis said.

Harris suffered a broken shoulder a few years ago when a driver in a Buick LeSabre drove onto a closed offramp on the Pasadena Freeway, hit Harris and sent him spinning in the air like a pinwheel.

“I remember seeing my feet flying up in the air,” said Harris as he took a break at a Caltrans maintenance office near Los Angeles International Airport. “The guy got out of his car and complained that his bumper was dented.”

It may seem to motorists that work crews are the source of Southern California’s notorious traffic congestion.

After all, if traffic is bogged down and commuters see the workers in their distinct orange outfits blocking lanes and offramps during rush hour, who else would they blame?

But agency officials say they do as much maintenance work at night, on weekends and during off-peak hours as possible.

Many other freeway closures are unavoidable--because of accidents that spill diesel fuel on the pavement or smash guardrails. In those cases, crews must block the roadway to make repairs, regardless of the time of day or amount of traffic.

Motorists stuck in traffic often don’t understand. They reach lane closures long after collisions have been cleared and assume the traffic delay is caused by a boneheaded Caltrans plan to make routine repairs in the middle of rush hour.

“It’s not that we want to be in their way,” said Miles. “It’s that we have to be to keep the system functional.”

This can lead to ugly confrontations.

A year ago, equipment operator Alfredo Davis said a motorist challenged him to a fight because he was in a Caltrans truck, blocking traffic at night on a downtown freeway connector road that others in a sweeper truck were cleaning.

For the most part, Davis and his fellow workers are sturdy men who could probably hold their own against the average driver. But it is foolhardy, said Davis, to tussle with every stranger who picks a fight.

“The problem is, you don’t know who these people are,” he said. “You don’t know if they have a gun or what.”

Even Caltrans’ top administrator, Jeff Morales, has been a target. A couple of years ago, when Morales toured agency facilities in Los Angeles, he took a ride on a street sweeper on a downtown freeway ramp. An angry motorist pulled off the freeway, got out of her car and pounded on the sweeper door.

“This lady was banging on the door, yelling at the director: ‘Why are you closing the ramp?’” Miles said.

The agency urges its employees not to get tangled up with irate motorists and instead to call the CHP for backup.

But such confrontations have become so common that Caltrans workers say they have learned to take the assaults and insults in stride.

“At this point, it’s like water off of a duck’s back,” Dennis said. “Sometimes I just smile and wave back.”

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