Work Zone Awareness especially important for McCook, Culbertson

National Work Zone Awareness Week this week has special meaning for the McCook and Culbertson area, with one of the busiest highways in the region now the subject of a $6.4 million improvement project.

Paulsen Inc. crews are at work on U.S. 6-34 between the two towns, extending culverts, patching concrete pavement, replacing guardrail, working on bridges and overlaying the roadway and shoulders with asphalt.

Bridges over the Frenchman River west of Culbertson and the Blackwood Creek east of Culbertson will have one-lane traffic at times, using temporary traffic signals, pilot vehicles and flaggers.

We have a special respect for flaggers and construction crews that brave construction weather in Nebraska, which can range from bone-chilling cold to sweltering heat, and urge drivers to observe the traffic control signs, signals and flaggers to transit safely through workzones.

But like the old saying goes, the life you save may be your own.

According to the Nebraska Department of Roads, nearly 85 percent of those killed in work zone crashes are drivers or their passengers. The numbers have been improving in Nebraska, with 14 fatalities in work zone crashes in 2004, down to four in 2009, the last year for which data is available.

Tougher workzone speeding zones may get the credit, but so may technology now being employed by the NDOR. The agency has 45 permanent changeable message boards and at least 183 portable message boards at strategic locations throughout the state. These message boards deliver "real time" information about congestion or incidents to enable drivers to take an alternate route or otherwise change plans.

Nebraska's statewide 511 telephone system is available to provide 24-hour-a-day, year-round travel, road and weather conditions information.

We all have a responsibility to be rested, sober, alert and not distracted when we get behind the wheel, but never more so than when it comes to sharing the road with construction crews.