ANNAPOLIS — After a pair of deadly work zone incidents cast attention on the dangers of road work, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore enacted a set of protections for workers and their families that his administration describes as “a moral imperative.”
Hours after the state’s legislature adjourned, a bill increasing fines for work zone speed violations and another covering educational costs for families of fallen workers were among the first measures from the 2024 session that Moore signed into law.
At a bill signing ceremony, Lt. Gov. Aruna Miller, a former transportation engineer, invoked two fatal crashes that inspired the new legislation. In March 2023, six highway workers died when a car careened into a work zone on Interstate 695. Nearly a year later, six construction workers repairing potholes atop the Francis Scott Key Bridge were killed when a container ship struck the bridge, causing it to collapse.
“The men and women in the construction industry place themselves in harm’s way every day on the frontline of service,” Miller said. “We saw it happen on March 22, 2023. And we saw it happen again on March 26, 2024. It’s a moral imperative that we protect workers who provide critical service, public service for all of us.”
Among the measures to receive Moore’s signature was the Maryland Road Worker Protection Act, which Miller championed throughout the legislative session and touted Tuesday, during an event overlooking the site of the I-695 crash to mark National Work Zone Awareness Week.
Effective June 1, the new law permits the installation of multiple speed cameras within a single work zone and raises the fine for speed camera violations to $80. The current penalty in Maryland is $40, among the lowest such fines in the country.
Beginning January 2025, fines shift to a tiered system ranging from $60 to $500 depending on the driver’s speed. Fines will double if workers are present at the time of the violation.
The new law is part of a larger effort to change driver behavior in work zones by strengthening enforcement methods and increasing education. Distracted driving, aggressive driving and speeding are the leading causes of work zone crashes, according to the State Highway Administration.
“Most crashes are not accidents,” State Highway Administrator William Pines told Capital News Service. “In reality, they’re very preventable. The majority of crashes that occur happen because of behaviors with drivers. So if we want to stop the root cause of most crashes, we’ve got to deal with driver behavior.”
But the law offers no safety solutions for incidents like the collapse of the Key Bridge, which was unrelated to driver behavior. Maryland Transportation Secretary Paul Wiedefeld told Capital News Service on Tuesday that officials may consider structural solutions to bolster bridge safety but are awaiting the results of an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board before making any specific policy proposals.
Instead, lawmakers responded to the bridge collapse by recognizing the toll that work zone crashes leave on workers’ families.
In the final hours of the legislative session, the General Assembly passed the Protecting Opportunities and Regional Trade (PORT) Act, primarily aimed at providing emergency aid to workers and businesses affected by the closure of the Port of Baltimore.
Moore’s administration offered a successful amendment to the bill creating the Fallen Transportation Workers Scholarship Program, providing tuition assistance for five years of full-time study or eight-years of part-time study to children and spouses of workers who have died on the job since 2022.
“What happened on the bridge is horrifically traumatic, and I think one of the things that we wanted to do is protect others who are in a similarly dangerous situation,” said Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City), who co-sponsored the PORT Act.
“Certainly, we wish there were no one participating in that fund, but sadly, we know how dangerous this work is,” he continued.
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