Businesses hate it when they get regulated, and it’s understandable — because every change a company faces can force it to change its operations, and that means losing money, in the short run at least.  But when businesses — in this case, private highway contractors — are creating risk, danger, and fatal results for Americans, it’s time for government to step in.  Mike McIntire’s thorough reporting in the New York Times shows that highway contractors are ignoring the law to ensure higher profits, and motorists are dying as a result.  McIntire points out a simple thing that any cyclist has probably encountered more than once — but you think about less when you’re in a car or on a motorcycle.  The problem comes when fresh asphalt has been laid without a gradual decline towards the margin — leaving a straight vertical edge of several inches, what McIntire refers to as a “sudden dropoff.”  Motorcyclists and even cars can get trapped in the margin, or try to bump up over the vertical asphalt edge and lose control, and according to the Times article, 160 people are killed and more than 11,000 injured every year.

That’s just one kind of accident.  McIntire writes that about accidents in the

thousands in highway work zones across the country that have killed at least 4,700 people — more than two a day — and injured 200,000 in the last five years alone. Ubiquitous annoyances of on-the-go American life, work zones are sometimes death traps, too.

Behind this human toll is a litany of mundane hazards: concrete barriers in the wrong position, obsolete lane markings left in place, warning signs never deployed.

Usually the blame is placed on drivers — the assumption is that they are driving too fast, or recklessly.  But often negligent contractors are to blame. And each state has a different set of requirements, and a tendency to favor certain contractors, many of whom get away with safety violations.

As spending on highway repairs continues to ramp up with Recovery Act funds, it’s time for a national approach to safety in work zones — and for an end to a senseless loss of life.

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