Missoula Road Construction Accidents

As per the Federal Highway Administration, dangerous road conditions in construction zones contribute to increasing numbers of motor vehicle accidents every year. Its most recent ascertainable statistics are from 2015. It reports that 70,499 construction zone crashes occurred that year. Of those, 25,485 crashes involved injuries. At least one fatality occurred in 642 of them. Those numbers average out to a work zone accident every 5.4 minutes.

Here’s an accident with a fatality and several serious injuries that happened in 2018. According to the Great Falls Tribune, east of Missoula, a construction zone crash left a 75-year-old Colorado man dead and four others injured after the 16-year-old driver of a pickup truck lost control of the vehicle when he was entering a construction zone. The pickup was westbound on Interstate 90 at about 2:30 p.m., and the driver encountered a lane closure. That’s when he allegedly attempted to overtake another vehicle, hit several orange construction barriers, oversteered and overcorrected. The truck allegedly went into the median, rotated counterclockwise, went airborne and landed in the eastbound lanes of the highway where it hit the driver’s side of an RV motor home with seven people in it.

When drivers are given warning of a construction zone ahead of them, there are likely to be hazards ahead. These areas are often confusing, and traffic gets congested. Here are a few of those hazards that drivers might encounter:  

• Narrowed or rerouted lanes that increase the chances of a sideswipe or a head-on collision with oncoming traffic. There’s not much maneuvering room to avoid an accident. 
• Construction workers on or near a driver’s lane. Drivers might abruptly slow down and actually cause a rear-end collision. Working next to a lane of traffic is always dangerous for a road construction worker. 
• Construction equipment on or next to a roadway like graders, rollers or dump trucks. Their operators often don’t have much room to do their jobs. 
• Confusing configurations of traffic cones and barricades with poor signage that can lead a driver into a wrong lane of traffic or other dangers. 
• Construction debris like excess concrete, asphalt or gravel on the road. Even tools or machinery can be left on a roadway.

Whether you were a driver or a worker who was injured in a road construction accident, we’re going to provide you with a thorough investigation and aggressive legal representation. We’ll look into every avenue of legal recovery for you. Our objective is to hold all negligent parties accountable and obtain maximum compensation for your injuries and losses.

Don’t think of us as just another law firm. Rather than that, think of us a resource that’s available for you to use to help put your life back together after being seriously injured in an accident. If you were injured in an accident in a road construction zone crash, or if you lost a family member in one, you can contact us to arrange for a free consultation and case evaluation.