FAIRFIELD — With warmer weather comes more construction projects, more traffic and the potential for more accidents.
Transportation officials on Thursday recognized National Work Zone Awareness Week with a message for all drivers: slow down, stop looking at your phone and move over if someone is in the breakdown lane.
“Speeding through a work zone, ignoring signage or driving aggressively doesn’t just risk a ticket, it risks lives,” said Lt. Bruce Scott of the Maine State Police.
The event comes just three months after two Maine Department of Transportation workers were killed in a work zone in Waterville. Jimmy Brown and Dwayne Campbell were struck and killed by a vehicle, and two others were seriously injured.
Maine DOT Commissioner Dale Doughty said a new public awareness campaign will not only urge drivers to slow down and obey traffic cones and signs but will include research to find better ways to protect workers.
“We’re all aware no policy, no procedure, no training, no technology, can change the trajectory of an errant driver,” he said.
Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat running for the U.S. Senate, remembered Brown and Campbell as family men who were hard workers.
“You knew if you needed something you could call on them and they would be there,” she said. “That work ethic was a hallmark of Jimmy and Dwayne’s character. They shared the same deep commitment to getting the job done without cutting corners.”
At a DOT training center in Fairfield, Mills signed into law a bill to extend death benefits to DOT workers killed in the line of duty. The benefits are similar to those granted to firefighters, police officers, emergency medical services personnel and corrections officers.
According to federal data, transportation workers nationwide suffered 1,391 fatal work injuries in 2024.
During a public hearing on the bill in March, bill sponsor Rep. Amy Roeder (D-Bangor), read a letter from Tyler J. Brown of Waterville, the son and stepbrother of Brown and Campbell.
“Out of everybody in my life, my Dad and Dwayne were my mentors,” he wrote. “If I needed help, if I needed to get anything off my chest, or if I needed advice, those are the people I would go to.”
The bill directs funds to the families of Brown and Campbell and future Maine transportation department employees who die “while performing official duties,” according to the governor’s office.