To tarp or not to tarp
and leaving this facility with materials to dump will not be allowed to dump unless the load is tarped. Any truck that is not equipped with a ...
Road workers safer with bigger pothole crews, officials say
How many workers does it take to patch a pothole?
That might sound like the start of a joke about government payroll padding, but it's actually a serious public safety question to state transportation workers.
Pothole patching can require a crew of six to 10 or more if the ripped-up roadway is a main street, highway or expressway, according to the Illinois Department of Transportation. And government officials say these workers are necessary to get the job done safely.
Illinois Department of Transportation workers fill potholes Wednesday on Mannheim Road between Irving Park Road and Grand Avenue. (Tribune / Nancy Stone)
While only two or three workers actually patch the holes, a large supporting cast protects them from the traffic whizzing by. This includes extra staff to drive an arrow board sign, hold warning signs and drive a "blocker" truck -- all providing as many barriers as possible between workers and traffic.
"That's for everybody's safety, for ours and the driving public," said Dan Scandiff, who supervises a state Transportation Department road crew and has been filling potholes on state-maintained roads for more than three decades.
Even with safety precautions, the job has inherent risks: This month, a driver hit and killed a highway worker filling potholes in a construction zone on Interstate 80 in northwest Indiana. The driver admitted he had been drinking, and two containers of beer were found in his car. He was charged with reckless homicide and failure to stop at a fatal crash.
A city worker filling potholes in Omaha was seriously injured Wednesday when a vehicle rode over a curb and struck him. The same day, a driver in the St. Louis area was killed when his car smashed into a Missouri Department of Transportation dump truck used to patch potholes and hit a tractor trailer. None of the workers were hurt.
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