There are many dangerous workplaces where the risk of severe injury or death almost always looms large. Highway construction work is one of these jobs, and the work is certainly not easy. Each year during road work season, construction workers across the nation put on bright orange vests, hard hats, and other highly visible apparel and go out into the hot sun to operate heavy equipment with traffic passing within inches of where they are working.
The work that highway construction workers do to maintain our roads helps us to have safe roads to drive on throughout the year. Unfortunately, despite workers’ and employers’ best efforts to create safe work areas, highway work zone accidents kill and injure construction workers in highway work zones each year. Drivers sometimes have trouble safely navigating within construction zones, and when they crash into the cones, barrels, or other barriers that delineate the work area, they often collide with workers within the work zone. Said collisions are often the result of a failure to follow work zone speed limits, and, in recent years, distracted driving accidents in work zones have been on the increase.
Vehicle collisions are not the only causes of injuries to highway construction workers. Many of them operate heavy equipment, which can cause severe injuries in the event of an accident. The extreme temperatures in some highway work zones can cause heat-related illnesses and injuries and it can also aggravate other medical conditions. The nature of construction work itself means that there is always the risk of sprains, strains, cuts, and bruises while workers are on the job.
When highway workers are fortunate enough to survive work zone accidents, they are often severely injured. Many injured workers are hurt so badly that it is likely to take them a long time to recover from their injuries. This also means that they will be out of work for a while, perhaps even for the rest of the season, as they work through the pain of physical therapy towards whatever degree of recovery they are able to attain. Some workers are left with permanent injuries, such as partial or complete paralysis, which may make it impossible for them to return to highway construction work at any time in the future. All of these things make recovery after a highway construction work zone accident very difficult, both physically and financially.
Barrett Law PLLC: Helping Injured Highway Construction Workers Throughout Mississippi
The Mississippi Workers’ Compensation Attorneys at Barrett Law PLLC understand that it can be very difficult to recover physically and financially from a highway work zone accident. If you were injured in a work zone, seek the help you need from the Mississippi Workers’ Compensation Attorneys at Barrett Law PLLC. Please call our office today at 1 (800) 707-9577 to schedule your free, initial consultation.