Improving Safety in Pavement Field Testing

The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) collects pavement condition and performance data each year, using both site-specific equipment that requires temporary traffic control (TTC) operations (either moving or closed operations) and full-sized survey vehicles that run at highway speeds. While many safety features have been implemented in the pavement field testing processes, additional safety features that minimize distractions, enhance the pavement testing operator’s (PTO’s) awareness of surrounding conditions, and improve TTC operations are still greatly needed. The purpose of this research was to better understand the risk to PTOs when they measure pavement data in the field, both at highway speeds and within TTC or work zone, and to investigate methods and technologies that would improve the safety of pavement field testing.  As a result, this study found that the most common cause of incident is careless drivers in other vehicles. Tests within TTC or work zone need safety improvement more than the tests at highway speeds. There are several technologies or measures available which may be implemented by FDOT to increase the safety of pavement field testing. A summary of findings and recommendations is provided in the report.