Stupid American Road Crews

I was coming back from the fertilizer plant with six tons in the spreader. Road crew has the road shut down to one lane. At the bottom of a hill they have me stopped.Guy flips the sign around for me to go. Points me to the other lane.

Half way up the hill two rock haulers come over the hill.I went to the right and the first guy hit the ditch. We missed each other buy inches. Get to the top of the hill. To find out I was not the only one that had problems. They had traffic going in both ways on one lane.

Got to the other side and stopped to ask the other flagger what the hell was going on. He told me that they had no radios so they just looked to see what traffic was like. Then opened the lane. Asked him how can you see the other flagger below the hill. No answer.

Told the DPS when I got back into town. They went to check things out.

We sure do need the Mexican crews back. At least they know what to do. Without anyone getting hurt.

Am currently traveling in the UK for vacation....road construction sites here frequently use automated traffic lites with plenty of time to clear the single lanes. Oh well...that means "sane thinking/planning" but at least two jobs lost!!

Ahhh, yes I'll bet the road crew was a contractor. I have shut down many a contractor down when they show up with no radios for their flaggers. I love working with low bid contractors....

The automated signals run about $20,000 for a one month job. Flaggers make min. wage.

It gives me great comfort going over every low bid bridge.....

What would Mexicans do different? Maybe they could pay more to the Americans then they wouldn't get McD's rejects.

umm i can tell you aint from out here lol virtually all road crews here are mexican, their best lately is making a very long heavy haul semi carrying a big crane pull off on the soft shoulder, yep rolled the entire rig, dont know what the road crew thought non spoke english

A decent set of walkies is what, 40-50 bucks?

Not in california on a prevailing wage/public works project. Flag crews make close to $42 an hour here in the golden state. No wonder why we are broke and almost bankrupt.

Davis-Bacon for a flag person in Michigan is min. wage ($7.40/hr). This is prevaing wage. I don't think Michigan Wage Decision is any different.

I had a crew of Union Mexicans on a bridge project. Many people complained about them working on the bridge, but I have to say they were some of the best workers I have ever seen. I hope they are on the next bridge project I work on.

Well for one thing they know how to run a proper road block. They let one lane go through,then make sure the other lane is clear before letting it go through. Plus they have the proper gear for the job. Not a stop sign with go slow painted on the back. I have been driving over the road for over thirty years. Never seen so many screw ups. Had a crew come through town last month. Filling cracks with hot tar. One idiot walked right out into. A four way stop,didn't even look at what was coming.

Hate to tell you this. But most American workers are lazy at any price. My son is in charge of house keeping at the local nursing home. He has people come to him all the time begging for work. He hires them and then he is lucky if they show up. Had one girl that showed up two hours late the first day and then took off three hours early. Did this for a week,then on Monday tells him she is looking for another job. Because she is not getting enough hours. He told her if she would show up when she was supposed to, she would have good hours.

The ones he hires knows that it is a low paying job.So they can't complain about the pay. American workers for the most part have gotten lazy. They want big paychecks but don't want to work for them.

That sounds like a driver problem. He is the one making final decision to pull off or not.

Simple solution,

We used to pass a flag with last driver in line before radios. (only if we got out of sight of other flag man). always ask that they held it in sight at all times . Only ever lost one because of a SA that kept it .

Rarely do I see a Mexican crew that doesn't have an American foreman, so if there's some screw up it's his fault.
I've had every body walk in front of me, our small town city crew with some of them having at least 25 years in will walk out in the road without looking. All the people at Walmart think those yellow strips are some invisible barrier, and bad drivers are every where. So basically I agree with you, just don't think one race is better than another.
When my kids were growing up told them if everybody's paying $6 hr just find the best job.
my opinion is business made the working class they just didn't happen.

I hate to say this, but I agree with oilburner. I drove a concrete mixer for a short time and found that mexican crews were easier to work with since they knew the industry standard hand signals. It always seemed like the mexican crews treated each other well. Most every white crew had at least one a$$hole who thought he knew it all.

County of state route? On state projects they are required to be in sight of each other or MUST use a pilot car. This is regulated by the FEDS. They must also have flagger training. This needs to be reported to the contracting authority as whoever is inspecting is not doing his/her job. All flaggers are required to carry a card and must be asked to produce it. Sounds like to me that there is a whole list of people that can be sued for liablility here.

County of state route? On state projects they are required to be in sight of each other or MUST use a pilot car. This is regulated by the FEDS. They must also have flagger training. This needs to be reported to the contracting authority as whoever is inspecting is not doing his/her job. All flaggers are required to carry a card and must be asked to produce it. Sounds like to me that there is a whole list of people that can be sued for liablility here.

There are solar powered automatic systems in use that work 24/7 in all kinds of weather. No flagmen required and they don't make mistakes. I was doubtful at first but they are great. Why, in 300 years or so, Pennsylvania (PENNDOT) might even try them.

In Kentucky we have a law that to work on a road work flag crew you must be a school dropout with less than 10 teeth and you must be on your cell phone at least 6 hours per shift.

Lot of posts here that seem to know a lot about something that they only know about from driving thru the construction job.

Flaggers have long been required to be certified, and must show their certification card to the construction inspecter on each contract, and their certification number is a part of the documentation to verify the payment for the traffic control on said contract.

Radios are almost always required for communication between flaggers, unless line of site visibility is certain for the duration of the shift, and that is rare.

The old days of "passing the flag" between flaggers is long gone. The modern flow of traffic is overrun with horse's patoots who think it's cute to not hand the flag to the other flagman.

The flagman will always get the blame for traffic flow problems, when the problem might be traffic that entered the construction site from a residential driveway, or from delivery trucks that are paid by the ton, and can't wait a few minutes to catch the traffic flow in their favor.

The guys who "walk out in traffic without looking" are not as stupid as you think. I promise you, they are watching you out of their periphical vision. If a road worker makes eye contact with a driver, the driver KNOWS that the worker is aware of them and the driver will take command of the situation. There's a certain amount of bluff that goes on between the driver and the worker. Most drivers, down deep, really don't want to hit a road worker, and the worker takes advantage of that fact. It's the odd idiot, or the cell phone user that the worker has to watch for. In my 33 plus years of road work, I only know of one centerline raker that was hit by a car, and that of course was one too many.

It's interesting to observe the drivers in a construction zone. There's two types - the casual, patient driver who's kinda interested in the machinery and what the workers are doing. And then there's the steering wheel beater who is simultaniously testing his torque converter and his brakes, and is mad at the whole world for at least ten miles after leaving the work area.

It's not really an "us and them" situation. The quicker they get the job done, the quicker they get outa your hair. We all have the same goal - finish the job and move to the next one.

Patience is a virtue,
Paul

I've seen the portable traffic lights in use instead of flagmen in both Iowa and Wisconsin in the past few years. The only trouble is that the crews seem to leave them up and running even when there's no work being done (nights and weekends) when the road should be back to 2 lanes. They want to keep people used to the lights or something.

Portable traffic lights are good when the road work is in a fixed location, long term. Like bridge work, or culvert replacement.

For moving work, such as paving and tarring cracks, where the work crew covers thousands of feet of road in a day, flaggers are the only logical choice.

You'd need two trucks and two drivers to move portable traffic signals on a paving job. Now you've got two minimum wage workers, plus two trucks, plus the traffic signals, plus the gas to run everything, plus the liability insurance on the lights and trucks... It would cost a fortune, for what?