New reason to go slow in work zones

Wayne Pauley of Villa Park is one of those road workers we are asked to be wary of when driving on the highways. Only Pauley was unfortunate to be a victim of motorists who didn't care at all to heed that warning.

Last December, Pauley was working with a snow removal crew on the Reagan Memorial Tollway when he was struck by two eastbound drivers. Neither driver had the decency to stop. To this day, no arrests have been made.

For weeks, Pauley was hospitalized with critical injuries. Broken ribs. A crushed leg. Collapsed lungs. Doctors had to put him into a drug-induced coma, and push his heart and pancreas back in place.

But this is a tough man. Pauley recovered from his injuries, enough so to return to work -- in his old job as a road worker on the tollway.

"There are other positions in the tollway I could apply for, but it's like falling off a horse," he said. "You want to get back on."

Pauley is one of the lucky ones.

One hundred eight-one highway workers have been killed on Illinois roads since 1951.

This includes Deborah Wead of Rockford, who was killed in 2003 while flagging traffic on the Higgins Road entrance ramp to southbound Route 53. Two years later, Lewis Lingafelter of downstate Tolono was killed in a work zone crash on I-294 near Elmhurst.

Last April, Illinois Department of Transportation worker Jeff Heath was killed while directing traffic in a construction zone on Route 162 in downstate Illinois.

Heath's death prompted the legislature to give motorists new reason to fear the consequences of being caught driving recklessly through work zones. It passed a bill that makes its easier to convict drivers accused of speeding, or driving impaired, through road construction areas or school zones. The bill, called Jeff's Law, was signed by Gov. Rod Blagojevich earlier this month.

It can be frustrating, inching your vehicle through construction activity, particularly when you are in a hurry. But there is no room for human error induced by impatience or road rage. Driving recklessly through work zones carries with it the very real risk that construction workers on foot or in stopped vehicles will be injured or killed.

The road construction season is not winding down with the approaching end to summer. Indeed, in just a few days, another huge road project begins on the Edens Expressway.

Jeff's Law gives motorists another good reason to resist the urge to abandon all caution through roadwork zones. The frustration of being brought to a halt for just a few minutes is nothing compared to the lifetime of pain suffered by families of workers killed in work zones, and the regret and shame motorists suffer while jailed as criminals who couldn't keep their cool.