“It is a construction company’s legal responsibility to ensure the reasonable safety of its work zones. The company overseeing the project, along with its construction site managers, must take steps to help prevent car accidents. These steps may include posting appropriate warning signs, keeping equipment out of the road, and creating safe detours around road work. Breaching the duty to keep a work zone reasonably safe, resulting in a car accident, is negligence.
A construction company could be liable for damages if it, as a company, negligently fails to prevent a car accident at a work zone. The company could also absorb liability if one of its employees contributed to the crash. If, for example, a construction worker carelessly left building debris in the roadway, and this caused a tire blowout and car accident, the construction company could be vicariously liable for the negligence of its employee. Construction company liability will generally come down to a claim against the company’s insurance provider.
In a case we are handling right now, the road construction company failed to place the proper warning signs in the proper places on an interstate highway. The company negligently required traffic to merge from the left lane to the right lane at a location where a merge was completely unnecessary. As a result, traffic backed up and blocked drivers’ line of sight. The truck drivers involved were required to make life or death decisions in a matter of seconds. One truck driver managed to change lanes, but the other truck driver did not have time to react and slammed into a pick-up killing an entire family. If the construction company had followed the regulations set out by the North Carolina Department of Transportation and the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, this wreck could have been avoided. Settlement was concluded with the truck drivers under the terms of a confidentiality clause, but the case is proceeding against the negligent construction company.”
**Riddle & Brantley, “Road Construction Caused My Accident, Who is Liable?”**
When you hire us to keep your work zones safe, you are:
- Ensuring the highest standards of safety for your team, as well as the public.
- Transferring liability to us for any potential work zone automobile accident.
- Ensuring DOT will not shut down your job site for not adhering to the MUTCD guidelines/NCDOT safety standards.