Road worker abuse getting worse
Highways Term Maintenance Association calls for information and action to reverse the trend
CONTRACTORS are being urged to collate and report all incidents of road worker abuse to reveal the true scale of what is believed to be a growing problem.
The Highways Term Maintenance Association (HTMA), the leading organization representing the road maintenance sector, is putting out a call for information so that industry, the public and the police can be alerted to the issue, and action taken to reverse the trend.
The HTMA’s latest figures show that 347 incidents of abuse were reported when just 10 of the 23 companies which belong to the association were asked. Of those incidents, 267 were in the form of swearing, shouting, hand gestures and face-to-face threatening, but with no physical violence.
The others involved more shocking assaults including shootings with guns and air rifles; the throwing of items such as screwdrivers or fridges at workers; and kicking, punching or beating male and female operatives – in one case with baseball bats.
According to the HTMA, recent reports of road worker abuse have even included incidents of people being driven at, chased with machetes, sprayed with ammonia, and even sexual assaults.
‘It can be men or women, from all walks of life, that abuse road workers be they passing through or living locally,’ said Pat Sheehan, the HTMA’s project lead for its task and finish group on road worker abuse.’
Mr Sheehan, who is also health and safety manager for transport infrastructure business Colas, continued: ‘It is easy to concentrate on the extreme stories of abuse, but the reality is that it is often people who are normally law-abiding citizens who boil over when held up in traffic.’
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 a daily or weekly basis. However, the perception is that things are getting worse.
‘We need a lot more data from each of our individual companies,’ said HTMA executive director Geoff Allister. ‘We believe that there is under-reporting and, for the public and police to see the scale and seriousness of the issue, the data we are calling on our members to provide is essential.
‘Equally, the acceptance that ‘you are working on the roads and should expect abuse’ should not be the culture. It is vital that workers and companies report everything, including behaviour that they think goes with the territory – it does not and it is not part of the job.’
