Kentuckians may notice an increase in highway work zone areas across the state, with construction season well underway to keep roads safe for both drivers and road workers.

The National Work Zone Awareness Week was created last year.

There were 13 fatalities in Kentucky's work zones.

So, for for our industry, the fortunate part was none of those were workers.

But the unfortunate part is 13 people lost their lives in work zones.

So that's important.

The over 1150 crashes in the work zones around Kentucky last year.

Work zone can be anything from a flagger out slowing traffic down, or trying to get them to shift to a lane to a major interstate type of work way where you see the concrete barrier walls.

And certainly in between those two streams are the barrels and cone work zones that you'll see pretty regularly.

But it can be anything from a very small blockage or a shoulder, a shoulder blockage to do some very minor work to a major blockage of a lane or even a whole side of an interstate to completely rebuild that piece of roadway.

So recent information shows that there are three contributing factors.

Are the top three contributing factors of crashes at work zones.

The first is distracted driving.

So we encourage drivers to put the phone down, keep their eyes on the road.

The second is, impairment.

So certainly do the proper thing and don't be using drugs or alcohol when operating a vehicle.

And then the third, of course, is speed.

And so we encourage people to observe the speed limit to, to keep themselves safe, to keep their fellow travelers safe and to keep the worker safe.

The camera law that went into effect last year was a law that's intent is to try to slow people down in the work zone.

There's there's research that shows that a vehicle traveling slower is less likely to create injury, both for the workers and the driver.

So it's important to keep people slow down.

It allows them more time to interact or react to changes in the work zone.

The deterrent is that if you get caught speeding while an officer is present, they can issue a citation for $500.

You know, what I like to tell people is that at 60 mile an hour, you're covering a basketball court every second and you're covering a football field every three seconds.

So when you glance down at your radio, when you glance down at your phone in a work zone, you're covering that distance without seeing what's going on in front of you or around you.

So it's really important to pay attention and to slow down, you know, the delay that you're going to realize in a work zone, at best is going to add a few minutes to your commute.

And while I know we're all in a hurry, it's important to keep ourselves, the workers and our fellow travelers safe when passing through these work zones.