Road construction Safety equipment

The Bureau of Labor Statistics revised the system used to code event and source data in 2010, resulting in a break in series; the data presented here are for 2011-2014.

• Transportation events accounted for 74 percent of roadway work zone fatal occupational injuries during the 4-year period. In 65 percent of these transportation events, the worker was struck by a vehicle in the work zone.
• Backing vehicles accounted for 54 of the 209 worker deaths in a work zone for which the direction of travel was recorded.
• Pickup trucks and SUVs accounted for 80 worker deaths at road construction sites from 2011-2014, followed by automobiles (77), machinery (71), semi-trucks (69), and dump trucks (47).

From 2003-2014, 68 percent of work-related deaths in work zones were to the following occupations:

• Construction laborers
• Heavy and tractor trailer drivers
• Construction equipment operators
• First-line supervisors of construction and extraction workers
• Highway maintenance workers

Private-sector construction, primarily heavy/civil engineering construction and specialty trade contractors, accounted for 59 percent of worker fatal injuries in work zones.

Service-producing industries in the private sector, such as the transportation and warehousing industry and the professional, scientific, and technical services industry, accounted for an additional 20 percent of worker deaths in work zones.

Fourteen percent of workers fatally injured in work zones were in the government sector with state and local governments each accounting for about half of government worker deaths at road construction sites from 2003-2014.