 I guess I'll never forget the date. It was July the 13th, 1994. The temperature was in the 90s, and so was the humidity. We met Joe at the water cooler. They'd been having trouble with their paver that was holding them up. Then I came along with my inspection report on the centerline problem. So problems were really piling up on old Joe that day. I think we know now it was a pickup, you know, with those wide mirror extensions, those Hollywood mirrors. I don't know. I guess we shouldn't have been walking side by side. Joe was going on about the pavement, and then, well, he just took one step to the left. I don't think he knew what hit him. Looks like a good day ahead, and there's a lot of work to be done. But this is no picnic. This is a construction work zone. When you go to work in the work zone, you've got to put on your work gear, right? Well, you've got to do something else, too. You've got to think safety. So wake up, get sharp, stay alert all day long whenever you're here, because this is more than just a work zone. This is a war zone. It was Cindy's third year with the DOT. She really liked being out there. You know, she was planning to go back to school to get her engineering degree. She was like everyone else when it came to safety. Wasn't too concerned about it. I thought she was a pretty careful person. Said it was all just common sense. Everyone said she must have been distracted by all the noise. I guess it wasn't anybody's fault, but her own. A construction zone is an active, noisy place with everybody doing their own thing. And if you're concentrating on your own job with your backside to others, you're putting yourself at risk because most likely those others can't see or hear you, either. Those others include not only pedestrians, they include equipment operators, too. These rigs have two dangerous things about them. One, they're big, as much as 150,000 pounds. If they hit somebody, you know it's going to be fatal. And two, if you're operating one of these rigs, it's awful hard to see anybody that's close to you, especially pedestrians. So if you're walking where equipment's running, you'd better keep your distance. A highway work zone is even more dangerous than your typical construction work zone, because you also have outside traffic to contend with. Here, you don't have much room to work in, or much room to make a mistake in. Wherever the work zone meets the traffic zone, you can have real trouble. I'd been on this project for about four months straight. I must have crossed that road about 4,000 times, a lot of times without even stopping. Even then, I try to slow down. You know, you don't just stop a 100-ton vehicle on a dime. What I didn't realize is that, well, we're all human. We all make mistakes even after 4,000 perfect crossings. Most drivers think you don't have anything to worry about. You're so big, nobody's going to hurt you. But I tell you, I'll never forget that terrible feeling in my gut when I knew that I couldn't stop in time. No way I could have stopped. The line between the work zone and the traffic zone is pretty thin. It can get crossed real easily by anybody in any direction, at any time, at any place. But it won't protect you if you don't know where it is. If you cross that line without knowing it, it's just like it wasn't there in the first place. And you'll never know what hit you. So you better know where you are at all times. This interstate's a real zoo. It's just a never-ending stream of traffic. And they're all flying by. So to get anything done, you got to put that out of your mind and assume that everybody's going to be driving safely. But someone once told me that of all the drivers on the road at any given time, half of them are above average. The other half are below average. So what are you going to do? Many drivers are often traveling on crews. And for some of them, their brains are on crews too, especially on a dull, uninteresting road. It can happen to anybody at one time or another. It's human nature. But if anybody's brain can be on crews at one time or another, then an accident can happen at one time or another. The result is your typical rear-end collision. In fact, more than half of all accidents on interstates are rear-enders. So even if you have signs, flashing lights, and the works, your work zone can still be a real surprise to an unsuspecting driver. It happens all the time. This can be a death sentence if you're not looking over your shoulder with your third eye or listening for that squeal of tires with your third ear. But that's what you've got to do if you're going to be responsible for your own safety. If you're not watching out for yourself, then you too might be on crews, just like that driver. Mike was a real go-getter. He'd been supervising for his company for almost 20 years. Everyone respected him because he knew what he was doing. Things were going real good. In fact, we were ahead of schedule. Oh, you're always going to have some sort of problem, but Mike always seemed to be a step ahead of it. So we were talking over this problem on the deck when his phone rings. The worst part was it was his wife who was on the phone. If you don't have your head screwed on straight about where you're at or what's going on around you, if you're just cruising along like a lot of drivers on the open road, then you're not going to be around for long because it only takes one careless moment and you're just one step from death.