The UK’s 4000 road workers regularly experience missiles being thrown at them, verbal abuse and outright physical attacks.  At the same time, they are also under threat from drivers ignoring speed limits through roadworks.  The result can be collisions and/or workers jumping for their lives out of the way of vehicles that have broken through the barriers by accident, or design.
Roadworkers are out on the country’s highways, operating in a dangerous and vulnerable environment on behalf of the public, to make the roads safe by, as examples, resurfacing carriageways, repairing potholes or upgrading traffic markings.  An Oxford University study ranked the job as the 16^th most hazardous occupation in the UK.  Highway services people are dealing with danger on a daily basis and should feel safe from the public who they are working to protect.
HTMA, which represents the road maintenance sector has, through its Health, Safety & Wellbeing Working Group, pushed for many years to raise awareness with the general population and the authorities, of the threats to the roads workforce and to tackle road works incursions and abuse.  Martin Cahalan, Head of Health, Safety, Environment and Quality for Ringway Jacobs, is leading the current project that is addressing these issues.
Key to managing what is perceived to be the growing problem of road worker abuse is that incidents are reported, not ignored and that there is strong evidence for the scale of the problem.
At the last count by HTMA in 2016, 347 incidents of road worker abuse were reported when just 10 of the 23 companies who belong to the Highways Term Maintenance Association were asked to supply figures.
Of those 341 abuse incidents, 267 were verbal in form of swearing, shouting, hand gestures and face to face threatening but with no physical violence.  The others encompassed a shocking list of serious assaults including shooting with guns and air rifles, throwing of items such as screwdrivers along with kicking and punching or beating male and female operatives – in one case with baseball bats.
In 2007 an RAC Foundation survey found that 80% of road workers had been physically or verbally abused by motorists and 40% of workers were abused on either a daily or weekly basis.
This year HTMA will be publishing fresh data following a survey of all its members which is currently underway.
At the same time, we have been building relations with the Police and are now working collaboratively together to resolve the problem of road worker abuse on a national basis.  The Business Crime Reduction Hub in particular has given us excellent insight into how we can work more collaboratively with them to effect change in the future through prosecutions.
We are also carrying out research into why drivers drive into roadworks, are they confused by the current signing or are they just trying to take a short cut?
Our aim is to change legislation so that roadworks incursions and assault of our operatives are automatically treated in the same way as street violence.  This is a long-term ambition but overall we are making progress; we have to.  Our operatives deserve to feel safe at work.
The campaign has been created to highlight the unsafe, reckless and anti-social behaviour of some road users which is putting workers lives at risk, as well as the abuse that the teams experience from passing motorists – often on a daily basis. 
There are many instances every day of members of the public driving recklessly and not having any regards for our workforces which was recently highlighted through a survey rolled out by one of our member organisations:
•    Drivers ignoring red lights and temporary traffic signals at road works – A vast majority (86%) of those surveyed have experienced road users ignoring red lights.
•    Drivers entering coned-off works – Over 70% of respondents have experienced motorists entering the works safe-zone area in the past year.
•    Verbal abuse from motorists – Three-quarters (76%) of employees have received verbal abuse from passing motorists in the past year.
•    Missiles thrown towards workforce – Nearly one out of three road workers experienced missiles being thrown towards them in the past year by passing motorists.   This included bottles of juice, coffee cups, eggs, foam bullets, food wrappers and banana skins – as well as reports of bottles of urine and even a dirty nappy being thrown.
•    Threats and intimidation – several instances were reported of threatening behaviour being made to road workers manning road closure points
HTMA are calling on road users to be patient and respect the work force who are carrying out essential road maintenance. 
George Lee, HTMA Chief Executive, said: “We all want to see better quality roads, but the reality is, for that to happen we need to improve the roads we have, which means roadworks and disruption. I am sure the majority of road users understand that and the need to respect those who are working on improving the roads network”.

Discussions and debates on safety, health and wellbeing will continue at the Safer Highways Summit on 11 September, Birmingham Conference and Events Centre.

http://www.saferhighways.co.uk/summit/programme/