Study on Improving the Worker Safety at Roadway Worksites in Japan

Work-related accidents at construction sites in Japan resulted in 1,001 fatalities and 44,886 injuries in 1996, but by 2005 these had fallen to 487 fatalities and 27,193 injuries. Among accidents at roadway worksites recorded between 1996 and 2000, traffic accidents rank third. Since 2001, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport has been seeking to protect workers by mandating comprehensive improvements to uniforms of traffic control personnel, replacement of traffic control personnel with robots, more appropriate positioning of traffic control personnel, and placement of delta cushions. This paper aims to contribute to safety at roadway worksites. Toward this, trucking companies and traffic safety contractors in Hokkaido were surveyed on their satisfaction with road safety measures. Additionally, experiments were done at the Tomakomai Winter Test Track to evaluate the visibility of traffic control uniforms. For safety measures at roadway worksites, traffic safety contractors responded that the items involving the upstream end of the worksite (i.e., traffic control personnel placement and delta cushions) would most greatly influence their satisfaction. Trucking companies responded that ways of controlling traffic would most greatly influence their satisfaction. CS portfolio analysis found that, for both traffic safety contractors and trucking companies, “ease of understandability of displayed construction information signs” and “nighttime visibility of traffic control personnel” require priority improvement. Experiments on visual recognition of traffic control personnel found the greatest recognition distances for fluorescent orange and yellow, and AHP analysis found the same result.