TECHNOLOGY MATTERS BY JESSICA LOMBARDO, EDITOR
Connected Work Zones Improve Worker
SAFET iCone connected technology can alert drivers to the presence of a road crew, helping to keep everyone safe
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rivers crashing through a work zone and colliding with a construction crew just trying to do their job is enough to keep all of us in the business up at night. As an industry, we’re working hard each day to educate the traveling public and raise awareness to the huge role they play in worker safety, but it’s still not enough some days. The pursuit of safety is never ending, but we’re fortunate to live in a time when technology is advancing at a rate that can help combat these mounting risks. We are able to receive and distribute information at a rate never before seen and that’s turning out to be a good thing for the road building industry. Digital signage along the highway changed the way we communicate information about work zones, but to the traveling public, those have unfortunately become nothing but white noise that they easily tune out. “No matter how big or small the job is, you’re going to encounter danger out there,” Ross Sheckler Managing Partner at iCone Connected Technology says. “Unfortunately drivers tune out signage so the challenge has been finding ways to wake drivers up when they are about to encounter a work zone and make them pay attention.” iCone initially developed the Smart Safety Barrel as a way of communicating work zone traffic data to a central location. This helped states and municipalities with developing and planning for a smart work zone and traffic management, but Sheckler quickly realized this technology could do more to keep workers safe. “We thought about what we could do to let every driver know exactly where a worker was,” Sheckler says. “We realized we could place sensors around a work zone and create a network center around the work zone.”
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ASPHALT CONTRACTOR NOVEMBER 2018 www.ForConstructionPros.com/Asphalt
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10/25/18 3:53 PM