Toll Facility Safety Study Report to Congress - About

Toll Facility Safety Study Report to Congress
ranging from LANE CLOSED to DO NOT ENTER. One agency used to use a stop sign on a
gate, but moved away from this after noticing cars approaching the gate and waiting for it to
open. Other agencies have moved away from written signs entirely – feeling that they add to
visual clutter and confusion – and now simply employ a red X or a green arrow to indicate lane
closure status.
The final significant source of driver distraction identified in the site visits was simple sensory
overload, or the challenge of reading, recognizing, and appropriately acting upon the multitude
of messages and signs presented to a driver approaching a plaza. Among the solutions sites have
explored to combat this issue are efforts to minimize the number of signs, movements toward
symbols (such as “$”) in lieu of or in addition to words (such as “cash only”), simplification of
messages, the placement of signs at eye level (as opposed to overhead or in-pavement), the use
of focus groups to test different sign configurations and messages, and banning advertisements in
the vicinity of plazas.
In addition to the various sources of confusion inherent in the design, layout, and operations of
plaza facilities, drivers also introduce their own activities that contribute to inattention and
distraction. While not unique to toll plazas, many customers engage in cell phone conversations,
read maps, and undertake a variety of activities that have been demonstrated to cause driver
distraction and crashes on all roadway facilities, not just toll plazas. In addition, a subset of
drivers, colloquially referred to as “wavers,” undertake a form of distraction that is unique to
plaza facilities. These individuals fail to properly mount their ETC tags and instead hold them
up to the windshield, out the window, etc. with little regard to traffic conditions around them.
While there is not much that can be done to mitigate against the actions of these individuals,
agencies have pursued strategies such as public education campaigns, provider warnings against
the practice in billing mail-outs, and instructing toll collectors to look for and discourage the
practice if possible.
Worker Exposure to Vehicles
When asked the one fear that kept them up at night, nearly every individual that the research
team visited with gave the same response – a worker being struck by a vehicle. While such
incidents are relatively rare, 10 they have occurred, and the potential certainly exists for them to
occur again. Among the factors that have contributed to such incidents in the past (or to more
recent close calls) are the introduction of ETC lanes, the uncertainty of driver actions in mixed
use lanes, the inability of operators of large trucks to see someone crossing directly in front of
them, the dangers in closing a lane, and worker complacency.
Given the level of concern surrounding this particular safety issue, it is perhaps not surprising
that a large and varied number of mitigation strategies have been tried and implemented to
address the problem.
The most aggressive mitigation strategy to protect workers from vehicular traffic is the use of
tunnels and bridges. Approximately half of the agencies visited by the research team had built
such structures for their larger plaza facilities. However, these structures rarely prevented all
incidents of workers being in the roadway. Most of the structures did not have entrances for
10 The accident and injury data obtained through this study did not include any fatalities and the project team learned
of only one fatality from the agency interviews.
Appendix D – Agency Site Visits Page D-4