Targeting Risk, Tracking Results: A New Approach to Safety
For National Work Zone Awareness Week, Scott Marion, president of infrastructure at Lindsay, spoke to Roads & Bridgesabout the areas shaping the future of work zone safety.
The discussion explores whether agencies should move away from broad, one-size-fits-all mandates and instead base positive protection decisions on quantified risk factors such as traffic speed, worker exposure and roadway geometry. It also raises the question of what institutional, regulatory or operational barriers may be slowing that shift.
The conversation examines short-duration and mobile work zones, which are widely recognized as high-risk environments. It looks at what it would take to make truck-mounted attenuators (TMAs) a standard, default safety measure in these scenarios and considers the potential role of policy changes or technology in accelerating adoption.
Marion also addresses how safety funding is structured, including how investments are itemized and how contracts might be designed to make those expenditures more enforceable and auditable.
Finally, the discussion turns to performance measurement, particularly the shift from compliance-based approaches to outcome-driven evaluation. It highlights key metrics such as fatalities per vehicle miles traveled (VMT), queue duration and TMA utilization rates, and considers how improved data collection could support more effective safety decisions.
About the Author
Gavin Jenkins, Head of Content
Head of Content
Gavin Jenkins is an award-winning journalist based in Pittsburgh. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, VICE, Narrative.ly, Prevention, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Beijing Review.
In 2020, two stories he wrote for Pitt Med Magazine earned three Golden Quill Awards from the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania. “Surviving Survival” won Excellence in Corporate, Marketing and Promotional Communications – Written, Medical/Health, while “Oct. 27, 2018: Pittsburgh’s Darkest Day, and the Mass Casualty Response” won Excellence in Written Journalism, Magazines – Medical/Health, as well as the Ray Sprigle Memorial Award: Magazines, a Best in Show award.
After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown in 2003, he covered sports for the Bedford Gazette, in Bedford, Pa., and the Martinsville Bulletin, in Martinsville, Va. In 2006, he returned to Pittsburgh to write for Trib Total Media. Based out of the Kittanning Leader Times, he worked for the Trib for two years, and then he moved to Shenzhen, China, to teach English and freelance. After two years in China, he earned an MFA in nonfiction from the University of Pittsburgh.
When he's not at work, he's usually playing with his border-collie mix, Bob.