Slow but steady progress on legislation to protect road workers

Late last month, a Michigan Senate committee advanced legislation to enable the use of automated technology to enforce speeding laws on segments of roads under construction.

Pennsylvania became the latest to join dozens of other states employing the technology, with positive results.

This week’s Talking Michigan Transportation podcast revisits the issue with conversations with two advocates for safer work zones.

First, Rob Coppersmith, executive vice president of the Michigan Infrastructure and Transportation Association (MITA), talks about how his experience in the underground and road construction industries have informed his views and passions for the protection of workers.

Later, Juan Pava, Safety Programs Unit chief, Bureau of Safety Programs and Engineering at the Illinois Department of Transportation, talks about his state’s pioneering role in implementing the use of cameras to deter drivers from speeding in work zones.

Michigan House Bill 4132 passed the lower chamber in June 2023 with bipartisan support and received similar support in the Senate Transportation Committee last month.

Key points: 

•  In 2006, Illinois became the first state to authorize the use of automated traffic enforcement programs to enforce speed limits in highway work zones, with implementation coming a few years later. The enabling legislation provided a legal framework for photo enforcement of speed limits in highway work zones. 
• In summer 2022, some Michigan lawmakers, Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) officials, leaders in labor organizations, and the road building industry witnessed demonstrations on Michigan freeways on how the technology works.  

Transcript

Jeff Cranson: 0:07

Hello, welcome to the Talking Michigan Transportation Podcast. I'm Jeff Cranson. Today I'm going to be revisiting the topic of automated work zone safety cameras. The cameras allow for issuing citations to people speeding in zones where workers are doing road work. It's a problem across the country. It leads to deaths. Often those deaths are the people driving and not just the workers in those work zones. It's being used very effectively in dozens of states now, and Illinois was one of the first to adopt the technology back in 2006.

Jeff Cranson: 0:52

So I'll be talking to Juan Pava, who is the Safety Programs Unit Chief at the Illinois Department of Transportation. He's been on the podcast before and he'll talk about how it's worked there, why he thinks it's been so effective. And before that I'll be talking with Rob Coppersmith, who is the Executive Vice President of the Michigan Infrastructure and Transportation Association, also known as MITA, and they are the association made up of the contractors and the people who build the roads, and they have worked with other advocates tirelessly to get this across the finish line and hopefully see it become law in Michigan. So I hope you enjoy the conversation. So first today again is Rob Coppersmith, who is the Executive Vice President of the Michigan Infrastructure and Transportation Association. That's the association that represents the contractors, the people who actually build our roads around the state.

Jeff Cranson: 1:49

This is Rob's first time on the podcast. I especially wanted him on because of what I thought were very eloquent comments he made Monday at the National Work Zone Awareness Week kickoff, particularly when it comes to this automated enforcement legislation and trying to finally get it over the finish line. If there was a race, this would be more tortoise than hare, but we're definitely sticking with it. So thank you, rob, for taking time to do this.

Rob Coppersmith: 2:16

Yeah, you're welcome, happy to be a part of it, and you know MITA fully supports this effort to try to get cameras in our work zones. A little background information for those that don't know it I was on the Work Zone Safety Task Force. This was probably one of the first items that bubbled up to tackle for our state and there was only two or three states that were doing it at the time. So we had a ton of Zoom calls and a ton of good information, a ton of lessons learned, and we were asking questions like well, if you could do it all over again, what would you change? So you know, we got some of those tweaks. And then you know, h ere we said 23 other states have put cameras in their job sites because they see the value of that and recognize the pushing. And I hope it's a question of when, not if, and anyhow.

Jeff Cranson: 3:33

Well, talk a little bit about your background and making your way up through the ranks of MITA, and why I mean you have a specific passion for this issue, and talk about why that is.

Rob Coppersmith: 3:45

Yeah, so I didn't just get plopped in here. I have been working within the heavy construction industry for 30 years in the association world, but I started out as a safety director for the associated underground contractors, who then merged with the Michigan Road Builders, and so I can be a little passionate about safety. I used to keep journals of fatalities and other things like that and I had to give it up for mental health reasons, but I've been involved in too many of the downsides. I've seen people that can't come back to work because of the anxiety that being around a heavy construction site can cause after an incident like that, what it's done to families and just the side that nobody really talks about, or it's a 10-second blip on a news screen at the end of the day and you know.

Rob Coppersmith: 4:53

And to see that last year we lost 20 people in work zones and had 7,200 plus crashes to me is just unacceptable and I feel like when we talk about this legislation there's, you know, I just wish there were more people trying to say yes instead of finding ways to say no. This has gone on for quite some time and every time we think we get close to moving the needle or getting this done, it seems like we get another stick in the spokes. So you know, we think it's fair legislation, we think that it will save lives on both sides of the barrels. I'm adamant about that. We as an association focus on a lot of worker safety, as we should. But what benefits workers? Benefits the person behind the wheel.

Jeff Cranson: 5:39

You make a good point, too, that when this first started, almost four years ago now, we could have been among the national leaders. Now the best we could do is be middle of the pack, as so many other states have come on board, right and yeah you know.

Rob Coppersmith: 5:52

Let's face it we like to think of ourselves as leaders in the transportation industry yeah, I think, and I and I think that we were trying to fulfill that role. We weren't, we weren't trying to be cutting edge. This is something that has been proven in other states. So we weren't the first to go out on this, you know, journey and try to figure out if it would be something that worked or not. We saw the data. We saw that Maryland was just ecstatic about it and, you know, they were one of the first to put that in and just kind of scratching our heads as to why this can't happen in Michigan.

Jeff Cranson: 6:31

Yeah, so the biggest thing you always hear is the you know the big brother fear the privacy aspect .

Rob Coppersmith: 6:44

I don't know how much water that bucket holds anymore, because you know people will say Big Brother, but then they'll also say, well, but i have one of these.

Rob Coppersmith: 6:53

So you know, and I think what it is is that, and I'm not going to try to shift gears on you but you know, we're one of the few states that don't have toll roads. We're one of the few states that don't have toll roads. The states that do have toll roads, we're going to gateless tolling, and so those individuals are used to having something on their phone that you know we owed a little bit. Um, either behind or not used to it, I guess, or haven't come accustomed to that. This is happening all over the country in one way, shape or form, um, as far as uh, tracking where you're driving to a certain degree, like when you drive those tolls, they know you went through it and it's my understanding that you know this is even less offensive than that from a.

Jeff Cranson: 8:10

They're just going to capture your, you know, at that specific time when you go through, so if you're speeding, so Well, and it's proven to be a deterrent, those other states that you talked about have found that people start to recognize the technology. I remember when we did the demonstrations both on the east side of the state and then also in greater Grand Rapids on M6, the observation among some that some of those truckers who do interstate travel, you know and see other states, they recognized that this was a demonstration, but they knew what was going on and you could hear their air brakes come on as they saw what was going on out there.

Rob Coppersmith: 8:48

Well, and you know I know a lot of people love having state police in their work zones, and we know that the boys in blue are a deterrent for speeding. Obviously people react to that, but there's also some hidden risks for them. You know, when they pull over someone in a work zone, you know that creates a gawker effect, and a gawker effect creates a backup, and we know that backups are not favorable to our industry. So those are some things that I think we can do a service even to the state police, as they, you know, are engaged in this type of you know, obviously we want them to be a part of the mix, but it certainly would provide a higher level of safety for everyone involved.

Jeff Cranson: 9:38

And I think that's why, when you talk about those 20 deaths, that alone, that number, didn't get a lot of media attention last year. Two of those were workers and the other 18 were drivers, and that's often the case because of what you're talking about, because of backups and other things.

Rob Coppersmith: 9:56

So Well, and you know we we're on the front end of the hands-free law, so we'll see how that enforcement starts to impact driver behavior. Hopefully we'll see that trickle into our work zones as far as that. But I don't know. I do a lot of driving. I'm a 30,000 to 40,000-mile-a-year type driver and I see a lot of faces in phones. So I still don't think that the public has grasped the hands-free concept quite yet.

Jeff Cranson: 10:30

No, anecdotally, I agree, I see the same thing. I think that there was a little bit of a decline right away. You know this, cambridge Telematics, which is the firm that tracks this for insurance companies. They showed that Michigan, just like Ohio and other states that passed hands-free laws, saw an initial decline because of the media attention that surrounds the signing of the bills and everything. And then it goes away and I know the state police and Office of Highway Safety Planning are talking about another blitz to get the word out there, because I think a lot of people still don't know.

Rob Coppersmith: 11:03

Yeah, I would agree with that and I'd be interested to know because I don't know, like, what level of enforcement are we at with this particular issue? Is it purely just something we talk about, or is it being enforced, and to what level?

Jeff Cranson: 11:19

Well, the Bay County Sheriff's Department did a major sting a couple of weeks ago and gave out a whole bunch of citations. So there are isolated places where they're taking the enforcement very seriously. Yeah, so talk a little bit, since I haven't had you on and you're still relatively new in the position. You know what do you hope to do, coming through the ranks at MITA and having some historical perspective. What do you hope to do coming through the ranks at MITA and having some historical perspective? Funding is always a top priority. Trying to educate lawmakers and the public about that. The reason Michigan's roads are the way they are is because we simply don't spend enough.

Rob Coppersmith: 11:57

Is that your top?

Jeff Cranson: 11:58

priority.

Rob Coppersmith: 11:59

Currently it is, I think, without proper funding, a lot of good jobs go away. Some of our conversations we've had with lawmakers recently we have ramped up as an industry to, I think, you know, make the governor look great with their bonding program we have, we have. We've hit all the bogeys. We are getting these jobs done. Program we have hit all the bogeys. We are getting these jobs done. We're getting them done on time.

Rob Coppersmith: 12:28

And we had to acquire a lot of equipment and a lot of people to make that a reality. And we also know that we've been underfunding in Michigan for decades. So the reality is that we need to make this the new normal as far as a funding type threshold. And if we don't, and we start getting to what we call the funding cliff, which happens in the next couple of years, we're going to see MDOT levels drop back to, you know, 2018, 2019 type levels and the people in our industry aren't necessarily going to go to other industries. They're going to go to other states because they do what they do and they're good at it and they're operators, they're laborers, they work in the trades and they're going to find work to do in those trades and the equipment payments don't go away.

Rob Coppersmith: 13:25

So once we start losing our workforce because of a funding cliff, we're going to have a big challenge trying to get it back. So part of the mission here is to, you know, work on a funding package that would maintain our workforce and then keep Michigan moving forward instead of the downward spiral that it's been on for decades. So that's mission number one. You know, and I think about this from a staff standpoint We've got three engineers on staff that work with state and local agencies day in and day out, working on bid issues, working on specification issues, all contractors of all shapes and sizes, because what's good for a big contractor might not be good for a small contractor. So we want to maintain that integrity so that there are plenty of bids to go around for everybody and that we have that.

Jeff Cranson: 14:27

That's a really important point you made, because I hear that and I know you do too that the smaller ones, the regional ones, feel like they're not on a level playing field. So I think the fact that you're addressing that is a really good thing.

Rob Coppersmith: 14:40

Yeah, and I think that we do look at that when we're working with agencies, especially MDOT, on specifications and different things like that. We want to make sure that it's fair for all, and then we want people to do it. Safety we have a full-time safety guy out in the field and obviously I'm passionate about safety and we have a pavement marking safety committee. We have you name it. We have a safety director's committee that you know that deals with different things like that at all times and then at the end of the day, we want to be able to sit down and have a little fun. So you know, we maintain a high level of functions that we incorporate learning into. You've been to our annual conference Last year. We had 1,300 people, several keynote speakers, 100 vendors and a good opportunity for the industry to get together and keep those relationships strong, because I think strong relationships between the contractors create good product for the public.

Jeff Cranson: 15:48

Yeah, absolutely, and I think it's part of the talent drain. You know the talent exodus we talk about. You know growing Michigan and one of the things if we can't afford to keep that industry healthy and those good jobs have to go someplace else, then you're talking about. You know our sons and daughters leaving the state for work and that should be a priority too too Well with that.

Rob Coppersmith: 16:15

That kind of is a segue a little bit to.

Rob Coppersmith: 16:16

I was on the governor's growth council and she had a segment for infrastructure and I'm thinking, well, this is interesting, she's trying to grow, it's all about population.

Rob Coppersmith: 16:24

You know, to connect the dots, I think we were our work group was one of the areas that had real hard data, because MDOT has good data and MITA has been working with the public service, PSC, we have a report on funding and so we had a lot of good hard data to work from and firmly believe that good infrastructure is the backbone of any civilization and if we want to have people come to Michigan, you know a lot of times infrastructure doesn't just register Like you don't know that you have good infrastructure until you drive down a neighborhood that maybe you, maybe all the, all the electrical wires have been buried and and that it has good curb and sidewalk and sidewalk and all those types of things and there's beautiful trees and all those things kind of play into a psyche about.

Rob Coppersmith: 17:19

I like this place, I want to come back to it and it works for our commerce, for travel, we are a destination state and then it supports business and all the things that we know, and then it supports business and all the things that we know. But I don't think get enough thought when we're thinking about what should we be doing in Michigan? And I think, if you don't pay your Netflix bill, hopefully before you put your new roof on, if you've got leaks- so, yeah, that's a good

Rob Coppersmith: 18:21

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Rob Coppersmith: 18:21

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Rob Coppersmith: 18:21

agree with that. Yeah. And we did some polling

Rob Coppersmith: 18:21

through that council and one of the things that polled very well with even

Rob Coppersmith: 18:21

the younger people was a need for good infrastructure. You know we've made</span>ou know we've made national headlines with Flint and other types of and the dam failure up there and you know we need to stop making those kinds of headlines.

Jeff Cranson: 18:36

That is not attracting people to Michigan. Well, thanks, rob, for coming on and talking about all these things, and I appreciate the work.

Rob Coppersmith: 18:42

Thanks for having me Appreciate the invite.

Jeff Cranson: 18:45

And I'll be back in a minute with Juan Pava once again, who heads up the safety unit for the Illinois Department of Transportation and has been experienced in this automated enforcement technology for quite some time now, and he'll talk about what the latest is there and how well it's worked. Stick around, there's more to come right after this short message.

MSP Message: 19:05

In Michigan. Safety comes first on the roads. To combat distracted driving, Michigan passed the hands-free Law. The law makes holding or manually using a cell phone or other mobile electronic device while operating a vehicle a primary offense. This means an officer can stop and ticket you for violating the law.

MSP Message: 19:24

This can include, but not limited to, sending or receiving a call, sending, receiving or reading a text or email, accessing, reading or posting to social media sites or entering locations into the phone GPS.

Jeff Cranson: 19:38

With this law in place, drivers are encouraged to stay focused, keeping their hands on the wheel and their attention on the road. Drive smart, drive safe, drive hands-free.

MSP Message: 19:48

Michigan's hands-free law making the road safer for everyone. Free michigan's hands-free law making the road safer for everyone.

Jeff Cranson: 19:55

Okay, we're back again this time with Juan Pava, who is the safety programs unit chief for the Illinois Department of Transportation. Uh, he's a repeat visitor to the podcast. I had him on about a year and a half ago when we thought this legislation was making good progress. Now, after making it out of the House last summer, it's pending before the full Senate. The Senate Transportation Committee voted it out in March and it's a bit of a slog. But I guess I want to know from you, Juan, when Illinois became the first state to adopt this legislation and implement this kind of technology, did you feel like it was a similar struggle getting the bills across the finish line?

Juan Pava: 20:42

Well, yeah, Jeff, to be bluntly honest, I was not around when that came through, thankfully, thankfully, Thankfully. But but you know this is not uncommon to other states going through the legislative process. You know, fairly, there is a lot of skepticism with changes and there is a lot of resistance to change. But I think that for the states that have gone through the process of putting legislation in the books and for allowing these technologies to go into fruition, the benefits have been realized. Earlier today, actually, I had a conversation with some of my counterparts from the Washington State Department of Transportation and they recently went through the process of getting legislation in the books. In fact, in 2023, they got a new bill or a new law that allowed them to do photo enforcement and then they did some cleanup on the early 2024 legislative session. So it is an arduous process that requires a lot of stakeholders, consideration and consultation and collaboration. But I believe that the hard work does pay off because we have seen that these systems yield very, very positive safety benefits.

Jeff Cranson: 22:17

So when we last talked about it you kind of covered what the law does there, so you could talk a little bit about that, but then also talk about even maybe since that season, after a couple more construction seasons whether you continue to think that it's an effective way of deterring speeding.

Juan Pava: 22:38

Yes, so we did.

Juan Pava: 22:40

As I mentioned last time, our study was based or our program is based on a study that we did back in the early 2000s.

Juan Pava: 22:48

That showed very clearly that the presence of speed photo enforcement cameras reduce operating speeds and there's also a halo effect associated with these systems because drivers believe that these cameras are in more places than they actually are. So it does change behavior. You know, the last two years our program has been a little quiet here in Illinois because we're in transit, we're in transfer from an old contract to a new contract in which we're going to get new technology. So not much to share on that front. But again, referencing other states that have recently gotten new programs up and running, like Pennsylvania DOT for instance, they have seen great benefit and they have seen lasting change behaviors to speeding through their work zones, reason why we continue to push and we continue to work hard to establish a new contract with new technology, with new cameras, to continue to have that tool in our toolbox here in Illinois to target speeding in work zones, because it continues to be one of the leading causes for fatalities and serious injuries.

Jeff Cranson: 24:08

So what's new, I guess? What have you seen? What's evolved from the initial technology?

Juan Pava: 24:14

So camera technology is the first thing you know. The resolution of cameras has improved greatly, which allows us to take better pictures of the vehicle, of the license plate and the driver. Also, the radar technology has changed drastically. We used to have kind of like an infrared radar technology back in the previous contract and now we're moving to LiDAR technology, which is a lot more accurate. It also allows you to capture multiple lanes. At the same time.

Juan Pava: 24:51

It allows you to get additional information on the vehicle, that is, you know the type of vehicle, so that being either a passenger vehicle or a motorcycle, or you know a semi-truck. And all of that information can be used also to help us target enforcement, to do target messaging for educational materials, Because let's say, if we find out that the majority of drivers speeding are commercial motor vehicles, then we can tailor our messaging for that. Or let's say they're passenger vehicles, then we can tailor the messaging for that as well. As the new technologies can also allow us to gather more information about speed percentiles and better understand the types of work zones or where vehicles are speeding and help us identify ways in which we can maybe make other changes to change behaviors.

Jeff Cranson: 25:48

I guess you know I think you and I talked about this before in Illinois. It's not at all a revenue grab, the whole idea. If it's a diminishing return because more people are paying attention and not speeding. That's the ultimate goal. Right, it's all about deterrence.

Juan Pava: 26:05

Absolutely. You know we have stressed this from the get-go that the goal of this program is not revenue, it's safety, and we have been running this, you know. I proudly say that we have been running this program on the red since its inception, and that's what we want. We want for there to be compliance with the speed limit. We don't want people to get citations. What we're trying to do is to get people to slow down when they see the units and to go, you know, through the zones in a, you know, in a speed that is safe for everyone for them and for the workers alike.

Jeff Cranson: 26:59

Are you hearing?

Juan Pava: 26:59

of anything else on the horizon that might be added to further enhance the technology and the ease, I guess, of using this kind of enforcement.

Juan Pava: 27:03

Yeah, in my experience working in this program in Illinois, I came to learn that there's a lot of moving parts to running, administering the program.

Juan Pava: 27:11

There's a lot of moving parts to running, administering the program.

Juan Pava: 27:13

I think that collaboration between stakeholders is prime.

Juan Pava: 27:28

I think the biggest thing that is coming a lot more coordination between states to try to maybe standardize the format and, you know, the legislation throughout states to make it easier for the states to go through the procurement process and for the citation, adjudication of citations as well to go through the process.

Juan Pava: 27:49

So I think what we're going to be seeing in the next couple of years is not going to be so much on the technology side but more on the standardization of, you know, legislation and procurement in this realm. So I think that a few years ago there used to be a lot of resistance to these systems and I think that the public are finally starting to accept it and when we finally get everyone on the site that you know these are programs that are safety-based. We're not trying to make revenue here, we're just trying to make behavioral changes. It's going to get a little bit easier, so I'm hoping that the tides have turned and then we'll be able to make a lot of improvement on making it easier for states to implement these technologies and finally we'll start seeing some behavioral changes out there.

Jeff Cranson: 28:50

Remind me again how it works logistically, are the citations sent out by the Illinois State Police.

Juan Pava: 28:57

Not exactly so the citations are mailed. So they're issued by the Illinois State Police through our vendor, but the citations are mailed. Our vendor, but the citations are mailed. The vendor mailed the citation to the person that was driving at the time of the infraction, but all of these citations are validated by a state police officer.

Jeff Cranson: 29:23

Yeah, so the only that's what I was wondering. The only enforcement agency is the state police. None of the local police agencies are involved in that.

Juan Pava: 29:31

That's correct. At this time, all the operators will be Illinois State Police officers.

Jeff Cranson: 29:37

Anything else going on that you're seeing in terms of you know innovations, you know new things in work zone safety, since I know that's, you know that's your area of focus.

Juan Pava: 29:50

You know that's your area of focus. Yeah, you know there's a lot of connected technologies. You know Michigan is a leader in connected technologies and work zones. You guys have done such great work with smart work zone systems so we're starting to see more of that in Illinois. Here we're trying to get a work on data exchange, compliance, data feed. It's something that Michigan is in front of us on that and we look up to you guys to the work that you have been doing there trying to get that going. I think that, as I said, just similar to the speed photo enforcement, standardization of data feeds and standardization of practices is going to be huge in the next couple of years for work zones to make sure that we get ready for connected and autonomous vehicles.

Jeff Cranson: 30:51

So that's where we're going to be putting a lot of our chips in the next six months six to 12 months. Lot of our chips in the next six months, six to 12 months. Well, governor Pritzker's success with a pretty ambitious increase in fuel taxes and revenues for transportation had to trickle down to your unit and help with some of the safety programs too right.

Juan Pava: 31:04

Oh, we are so busy. We are so busy and we have a lot of support from management, so we really appreciate that we are giving the tools and resources to do our job.

Jeff Cranson: 31:13

Yeah, that's great. Well, thanks, Juan Again. I know you'll be keeping an eye on what happens in Michigan and hoping that you know. As I talked earlier with the head of our Contractors Association, a few years ago it looked like Michigan was going to be one of the leaders with this enforcement technology. Now we're looking at being in the middle of the pack, but whenever we get it it will be a good thing. So thanks for your help in explaining this again.

Juan Pava: 31:40

Of course you know anytime, jeff, and you know I'm very happy to be able to continue to assist Michigan. You know big shout out to my friends over at Michigan DOT. They have been great resources to me. So looking forward to continue working together and happy to see that Michigan is committed to. You know transportation safety works on safety through speed photo enforcement as well.

Jeff Cranson: 32:04

Thank you, Juan. I'd like to thank you once more for tuning in to Talking Michigan Transportation. You can find show notes and more on Apple Podcasts or Buzzsprout. I also want to acknowledge the talented people who help make this a reality each week, starting with Randy Debler, who skillfully edits the audio, Jesse Ball, who proofs the content, Courtney Bates, who posts the podcast to various platforms, and Jackie Salinas, who transcribes the audio to make it accessible to all.