They did some road work near me over the last several weeks. The first crew in had flaggers who were on the ball and did a great job of controlling traffic on a state highway that sees a lot of truck traffic. The 2nd crew in had flaggers that were a joke. I was going into town (our farm drive is on this state road) and came up on the flaggers truck. No flagger in sight. I slowed down any way because I knew there was work going on. When I got about 20 feet from the flaggers truck, almost at a stop, the flagger jumped out of the truck and started madly waving stop sign. I did stop and talked to the foreman to let him know. The flaggers were from a sub contractor and he was pretty upset about how they were doing the job but couldn't do much about it. This road carries a lot of grain truck traffic from the end of July untill late winter or early spring. Some of the drivers are really pushing it and maybe shouldn't be driving. So you guys who work the roads be careful. There are enough jerks out there behind the wheel to make it dangerous without pizz poor flaggers making it even worse! Rick
Labor Ready and several homeless shelters around the Seattle area hold flagging classes. Just saying But think about it
I think it's a requirement here for flaggers to huff paint before they start their shift. No one wants to speak, all goofy hand signals that make no sense. I had one, like a little kid, he had his arms straight out playing airplane running circles in the lane. That was his way of indicating swing wide right with the truck, but it confused the hell out of me I was watching like ***. I had the same incident happen, I was on a four lane in the right lane, there was a cement truck in the left lane, the car behind him jumped in front of me. I started slowing down, I see the pickups ahead, at the last second the idiot flagger jumps out of the pickup and starts waving the sign to stop the car so the cement truck can make the right into the job. I slam on the breaks if all else failed I was going to aim for his pickup I was not going left and I was not going to slam into the car in front of me. I did manage to stop three feet from the car. I don't know why they put the stupidest ones in the street but its endless here.
Yair . . . Over here in Aus. "traffic controll" has become a major industry. On some jobs there are more traffic control folks than construction workers. I believe most are fairly well trained . . . it must be a thankless boring bloody job. I see a greater use of the trailer mounted conventional traffic lights . . . manualy operated by the flaggers . . . and I reckon they most folks are more comfortable with them than the sometimes hard to see stop/slow/go signs. Cheers.
I had to laugh once when I was coming down a highway over the range of hills outside the city, with my old Mack F700 and semi-trailer load of grain. The Main Roads Dept were doing some major rehab of the highway sub-base, because they had trouble with the road surface breaking up due to underground streams of water penetrating the sub-base and the road base. There was only one lane open for about half a mile, and they had a "Stop-Slow" sign man each each, in contact with each other by two-way. I came down the hill and pulled up at the start of the roadworks, because I could see there was a stream of vehicles coming towards me from the other end. The guy in front of me was an old Italian guy, and the boredom had obviously got to him. He was leaning on his sign, which read "Slow", and staring at me as I stopped. I halted about 50M away from him, and waited for the oncoming traffic. He stared at me for maybe 10 seconds, then waved me on. I just sat behind the wheel, idling in neutral, brakes on, and didn't move. He motioned again with his hand to "Come on". I just lifted my arm, and pointed to him, to look over his shoulder, behind him. He spun around and saw the line of vehicles approaching him - and then he spun back, and turned his sign to "STOP", with a substantial degree of embarrassment. I just sat there and grinned. He must have been having a bad day. I know how soul-destroying it is, driving a road roller - but I've never been a "Stop or Slow" man, and I reckon the job would turn your brain to mush in a week. Surprisingly, women make good traffic controllers, they reckon they can cope with repetitious, boring work better than men can. The problems start when they get a spunky-looking piece holding the sign - the drivers tend to run into things, then.
In Europe, you don't see too many flaggers. Most of the time when there's road work, they set up temporary traffic lights. http://img.tjskl.org.cn/pic/z27cd9f2-0x0-1/temporary_traffic_signal_pts_308.jpg
OZDozer, these were women flaggers......... Rick
Rick - Hmmm, sounds like the job application went along the lines of - "Can you hold this sign upright?" ... "Yep" ... "O.K.", you got the job!" LOL
LOL OzDozer.....I did talk to a guy who was flagging for the first crew, yougnster, good attitude. He was leaning on the truck so I rolled my window down and and told him I thought that he was doing a darn good job of holld that truck up. He laughed and said yea it's hard work but it pays well. That was the first crew. The 2nd crew was the problem. I think the job questions were more like.....can you draw a breath without having to think about it....oh you can! you are over qualified.....NEXT! RIck
That's called natural selection. Around here (Columbus, OH) I see more city police officers acting as flaggers than construction workers. I mean I'm sure the police don't complain about it, better than getting shot at on the west side of town, but it doesn't make sense to pay a police officer to be a flagger.
A good, somewhat unrelated story. Several years ago when I was a park ranger, I had a chief ranger who was booksmart, but not too blessed with much common sense. Anyway I mainly worked maintenance at that park. The maintenance crew was run by a crusty old guy who was great to work for. Well the chief ranger hired us another maintenance guy to help out. And by hired, I mean the chief ranger did it all himself without involving the maintenance supervisor. You can imagine how thrilled the maintenance super was to be given an employee that he had not had a chance to evaluate. The guy's first day comes, and the chief ranger brings him into the shop to introduce him to all of us. The chief ranger proudly tells us all how great this guy is going to be for the park, what with all his construction experience and such that he has. The supervisor goes "Oh yeah, construction experience? What kind of construction experience do you have, son?" Without a moments hesitation, the new guy picks up a stop sign on a stick in the corner and holds it up, and goes "I did this"...then flips it to the "slow" side and says "And then I did this" I believe that if he hadn't been laughing so hard the maintenance super would have choked the chief ranger.