Work Zone Intrusion Report Interface Design

Project summary:

Work zone intrusions are a serious safety concern for crew workers, as motorists are known to intentionally or unintentionally breach the boundaries of construction, maintenance, and mobile operations. Understanding the factors that contribute to work zone intrusions is largely unknown because the method and standards for capturing data surrounding the events statewide and nationally are not well established. In the absence of information, little action can be taken to reduce the frequency of intrusions and address this worker safety risk. From 2005 to 2010 the U.S. suffered the loss of 733 road workers, approximately half struck by motorists. Motorists are also injured or killed by intrusion crashes, adding to the urgency for an understanding of intrusion causes. Addressing intrusions is an important step toward meeting Strategic Highway Safety Plan priorities and Toward Zero Deaths (TZD) program goals. This project provides a solution for the lack of work zone intrusion knowledge by creating a detailed intrusion report, modeling the efficiency of the MNCRASH report.

A user-centric, iterative design process was employed to design an adaptable web-based and paper report to account for simple documentation of intrusions not deemed a threat to worker safety and a detailed report for more thorough documentation of serious intrusion events. Final recommendations include organizational changes and support to encourage workers to complete the form and provide valuable data to the state.

• OST-R summary report for this project (PDF)