Ep. 88 - Why Construction Zones Are the Deadliest Place on the Highway

Episode 88: Why Construction Zones Are the Deadliest Place on the Highway: A Conversation with Ashley Napier

David Craig: Getting a truck accident attorney quickly is extraordinarily important because you want to preserve the evidence. The families of the victims, they’re suffering and they’re dealing with devastation or loss, planning funerals or sitting in a hospital room. But somebody that’s close to them needs to look out for them and say, “Hey, look, time is of the essence. We need to move quickly. We need to protect the family.” Everybody that’s responsible should be held accountable.

I’m David Craig, a board certified truck accident attorney who’s dedicated over 40 years to helping the victims of devastating semi-truck, large truck, and other commercial motor vehicle wrecks. When the stakes are high, you need the information to make the right decision. After tragedy strikes, many people don’t know where to begin or what questions to ask. It is my goal to empower you with the knowledge and resources you need to help you understand your rights and to protect you and your family. On the Ask David episodes, we flip the script. Instead of me asking the questions, I answer them. This is After the Crash.

Ashley Napier: Hello everybody and welcome to the July edition of After the Crash, Ask David Edition with your host, Ashley Napier. David, welcome to a fun-filled kickoff for summer, right? So I figured today I’d like to talk to you about construction zones.

David Craig: And I dressed appropriately.

Ashley Napier: You dressed-

David Craig: So I found out you’re going to talk about construction zones, so like, I am going to dress like I would dress if I was doing an inspection in a construction zone.

Ashley Napier: Right. Or you were working in a construction zone.

David Craig: Yeah. Well, yeah. I would hope I would not be working in a construction zone, but if this whole thing doesn’t work out, I might be.

Ashley Napier: Maybe.

David Craig: Yeah.

Ashley Napier: So I wanted to talk to you because I mean, construction traffic is something that affects me every day on my commute up and down 465. You always know when it hits because my drive gets significantly longer coming to and from work. So obviously, the viewers listening, you are all affected by construction zones and construction traffic. But I really want to focus on the impact that wrecks in construction zone have.

David Craig: Well, I think… I mean, this time of year, I always consider it an extraordinarily dangerous time of year. I’ve been doing this for 40 years now. And every year I get hired by a family who’s lost a loved one or who has had somebody in their family catastrophically injured due to a wreck in a construction zone. It’s going to happen every year. And it seems like that’s stretching out because it used to be only a few months. The summer months were the time. And now, of course, this is the time of year that we would see more construction zone wrecks than other times a year. But unfortunately, these construction zones now are going on all year round, it seems like. And as a result, we’re seeing construction zone wrecks every month of the year, at least in Indiana. And so it’s sad. And like you said, because of what we do for a living, we’re so much more aware of that. And when we drive through construction zones, we’re… I mean, you just drove out east.

Ashley Napier: Yeah.

David Craig: I mean, it had to be nerve wracking with your husband and your son to drive through construction zones.

Ashley Napier: Yeah. My 12-hour drive to South Carolina, let’s just say that… Because there was a major washout from some flooding in North Carolina. And so the last two years when we’ve driven that route, it’s been nothing but one lane roads, construction traffic and they’re working what I believe is like 20 hours a day trying to get it done. God bless them. But I’m just white knuckling through construction zones because unfortunately, we see the catastrophic implications of construction zone wrecks.

David Craig: And it’s one of those things that you don’t really think about. I mean, you think of it as annoying because it causes you delays until you’ve had somebody in your family injured or killed in one of these. Or if you do what we do for a living and you see the trauma and you see the devastation that it brings upon these folks that are just doing nothing but driving through construction zones. And so they’re more than an annoyance. They can be extraordinarily dangerous. And then the other problem with construction zone wrecks are that not every lawyer is equipped or capable or qualified to handle them. And so sometimes you see harm that’s caused in the construction zone, but then also you see harm in… They treat it as a car accident instead of a truck accident in a construction zone. I mean, truck accidents are complicated enough, but when you combine them with a construction zone, they’re even more complicated.

Ashley Napier: Yeah. You have multiple layers of things that you need to look at. And I know that… At least there’s something that I’m really proud of is here we look at, “Was it set up properly? What’s the signage look like?” I mean, I think that having a commercial motor vehicle wreck in a construction zone is just an entirely different animal. Do you want to speak to that a little bit or would you like to kind of-

David Craig: Well, I think… I mean, just before we go… I think for the audience, Ashley and I both have worked on a lot of cases together, and Ashley is over all of our litigation file managers, but she’s still involved in cases. And one of them that we worked with was a case where a gentleman was driving his semi. His truck broke down and so he had to get underneath his truck in a construction zone. And while he’s underneath his truck, it was a two lane going each direction. And while he’s underneath his truck, another truck driver who was impaired by drugs, was speeding, was traveling in the wrong lane, hit his truck and killed him. Our client would not have been underneath that truck if he didn’t feel like it was absolutely necessary because… For safety reasons, because his truck broke down. And in that case, the worst truck drivers out there have minimum insurance.

Ashley Napier: Absolutely.

David Craig: And that has been the same for decades now. And so it’s $750,000 or a million dollar policy. And when the breadwinner of your family, the father of your two children, your husband dies, suddenly, that’s not enough money to compensate you for a loss of your spouse and your father and the husband. And so you said that one of the things you’re proud of is that we look for other avenues. And so when we looked at that, that’s a case that most lawyers that don’t do trucking would’ve settled for the million or less, which is what the truck driver had, and that would’ve been the end of it. But instead, we looked at it and said, “Well, why was our client stuck on the highway? Why did he not have a place where he could have pulled off?” Because not everybody’s car is in perfect shape. There’s a lot of people out there who are driving and who are just barely getting by.

And so their tires are not good. Their brakes are not good. Their system… Some people run out of gas. I mean, it shouldn’t be a death sentence if your car breaks down or if you’re inexperienced and you have a flat tire and it’s a young kid or an elderly person. And so we looked at that and said, “We believe that the highway should be designed in such a way that you have a pull off.” And at least you know that there’s a pull off at so many miles ahead and you should either be able to make it up to the… Drive, do whatever you have to do to get to the pull off area, or there should be some other built-in systems that make it safe. And so we were able to look at that and hold people responsible for those decisions and help the client above and beyond the limits of the truck driver. And I think that’s a perfect example of a case that you and I just worked on not long ago.

Ashley Napier: Yeah, exactly. I’m so thankful that we were able to at least go that route for that client. She’s touched my heart and I will never forget her. But I think that that is something that we do with every case in a construction zone. We look at all the different variables that come into play. Like that one, he wasn’t left an out. And it ended in horrible circumstances. Last year, for example, there were, what, 139 wrecks-

David Craig: In construction zones.

Ashley Napier: … in construction zones. And this year, just through March, we’re already at 29.

David Craig: How do you know that?

Ashley Napier: Well, that’s a great question, David. Are we flipping this around now?

David Craig: How do you know? How do you know those things?

Ashley Napier: So there is an amazing website called semicrashmap.com. And I actually… In preparing for this episode, I didn’t dress the part, but I did pull up some facts about construction zones and the accidents-

David Craig: Would you think Aaron could pull it up on our screen? Look at that.

Ashley Napier: Aaron, way to go.

David Craig: Way to go, Aaron. And so right there, ladies and gentlemen-

Ashley Napier: Is semicrashmap.com. So we can see these are all the wrecks that have happened through that timeframe. And so I just kind of plugged along to figure out which ones are in construction zones and which ones aren’t. The thing that blows my mind about this, it confirms for me, every time I drive to Columbus, Ohio to visit my family, there are so many wrecks on [Interstate] 70 and that is where a big chunk of a construction project is going on right now. I mean, my mother actually just left last night. She took my son to swimming and she was on 70, and I just was a nervous wreck until she got home because I mean, we have so many clients actually that have gotten in a wreck on 70 in that construction zone area. And it’s terrifying.

David Craig: Yeah. And so folks that haven’t seen this, this is an app, this is… You can go website. And it’s called semicrashmap.com. And it’s something that our firm put together. We have a software engineer who designed it. It’s patent-pending. And we actually have it being released in every state. This is Indiana, and every one of those is a semi-wreck. And so there’s so many that it has to be… They’re consolidated. So you’ll see 77, for example, and that’s in the Indianapolis area. So that means there’s 77 semi-wrecks in that vicinity in that area. And then when you go to this website, you can zoom in and look at every single individual wreck. And then there’s a category in which we can look at it and say, “How many of these semi-wrecks happened in a construction zone? How many involve fatigued driving? How many involve failure to yield?”

I mean, just anything we want to look at, we can look at and find out information. And so what I actually looked at was, “Okay, how many construction zone wrecks were there in 2025?” And like she said, I mean, there were 139 total accidents. Of that, four people died. Four people died and there was over 200 people that were injured.

Ashley Napier: And that’s just the state of Indiana.

David Craig: And that’s just the state of Indiana. And then in the first quarter of this year, which you would expect it to be lower because it’s the weather. And so you don’t have as many construction zones, although you still have some. But in the first quarter, there were 29 total accidents. And thank God there were zero fatalities, but there were 34 people injured. And one of the things I did was I went and looked and said, “Okay, let’s look at this from a national standpoint.” And because we represent people throughout the country in semi-wrecks and in construction zones. But the problem, and why we created this, was the federal government is really slow in releasing data. And so you’re looking at 2023 data, but even that is shocking. In 2023, there were 252 fatal work zone crashes involving large trucks, according to the National Safety Council. And that’s shocking, 252 fatal work zone [wrecks] throughout the country.

And so you think about it when you’re traveling on vacations. This time of year, people are traveling. And so they’re going to go through states, and every state, there were fatalities, there were wrecks, there were injuries. And so hopefully… And why we created this was, “Let’s bring awareness to it.” Let’s create concern and let’s let people know that if you’re traveling on I-70, for example, like you and your family goes regularly, then look at the areas where the wrecks are. You’ll see this one shows that there were more wrecks around Richmond, Indiana. So if you’re around Richmond and Wayne County, you’re going to have to be extraordinarily careful because there’s a lot more wrecks.

And when you get around Indianapolis because of 465, 65, 70, all going through there, all coming together, so much traffic that you have a higher incidence of semis. And you can even go to this semicrashmaps.com and you can look and see, “Well, what days are dangerous? What times are dangerous?” So that’s part of it. And so certainly, and with construction zones, it does support what we believe, which is that there are too many wrecks in construction zones. All of the wrecks could be avoided.

Ashley Napier: Absolutely, they can.

David Craig: They could be avoided, but they’re not.

Ashley Napier: And I think that educating people of what you can do in a construction zone and what you should kind of… Maybe some tips to look out for. I mean, I think you were just telling me, I think, “Be careful, leave yourself enough room.” So maybe that’ll be a next podcast episode. I’m not sure. Just driving tips from David Craig. It’s just shocking to me. I mean, this is just January 25th of 2025 through the present time to think that there are 77 wrecks with… Just in-

David Craig: Indianapolis.

Ashley Napier: Yeah. Speechless, clearly, which doesn’t happen very often.

David Craig: And so, hopefully, people will become aware. I mean, because I know that when I first started practicing law a while ago and I didn’t have any idea how bad they were. I now can honestly say that I don’t drive through a construction zone without thinking about it. The pictures of my clients and the horrific wrecks that I’ve seen are ingrained in my brain. And so with you, my employees, my family, my kids, I’m constantly preaching, “Be careful in a construct zone. Just because you’re careful doesn’t mean other people are not going to cause the wreck.” And we know that most construction zone wrecks occur in the very beginning when people are funneling into reduced lanes and traffic slows up. And so we know that’s where most semi-wrecks occur. And the problem is that semi drivers, if they’re fatigued, if they’re distracted, if they’re impaired, they’re going to come into these construction zones and they may not realize that traffic has slowed down.

And we’ve had cases where semis had their trucks on cruise control and drove right into the back end, killing our clients without ever slowing or braking. And so these semis, they can travel down the highway, and as long as everybody’s moving, they can put their truck on cruise control. They can be distracted every now and then. And maybe nothing will happen if nobody cuts in front of them, if nobody’s near them, or the road doesn’t curve, maybe they can get from here to there relatively safely. But you throw in slowed or stop traffic, then that’s a recipe for disaster. And these truck drivers, if they’re fatigued and they’re not sleeping properly or they got sleep apnea, whatever, they kind of doze off and then all of a sudden they’re on this construction zone and suddenly the traffic stopped and they panic and they hit them.

So speed is by far one of the leading causes of wrecks overall, but it’s also in construction zones. Trucks are just going too fast. These truck drivers are [on] tight schedules and so they’re moving as fast as they can get through. Oftentimes, they’re going through multiple construction zones on a route. And so they’re behind and so they’re trying to catch up. And so they’re flying through these construction zones. Blind spots, they don’t always… There shouldn’t be a blind spot on a truck in this day and age, but unfortunately there still is. And so there’s… Oftentimes in construction zones where they move over and switch lanes and hit somebody.

We’ve had many times where they’ve hit them, then flipped them in front and then drive them down the roadway or underneath the trucks. I think those are some of the things that are the primary cause. So when I’m in a construction zone, when I see one coming up, I start paying attention. And then I try not to be the last car in line. I mean, it’s sad, but you don’t want to be the last car in line because if you’re the last car in line and it happens to be a semi coming behind you, you’re risking yours and your family’s lives. So you try to move ahead, get up ahead and then you just follow the rules and follow the lines and try to be safe.

And I would be first to admit that when I was younger, I would have a tendency, if there wasn’t people I didn’t see were construction workers, I might drive through this construction zone quicker than I should, above the speed limit. But after doing this for a living, I try really hard to just monitor it. And no matter how slow it is, no matter how many people are behind me, mad at me, I’d go ahead and do the speed limit because people die if you don’t.

Ashley Napier: Yeah, absolutely. And also, the flip side of the coin is we’ve represented construction workers who have been hit by passenger vehicles, yes. But there’s one gentleman that we represented in particular that I remember, he was in a construction vehicle trying to motion for people to move over and the semi completely disregarded everything and plowed into the back of his vehicle. So construction workers too, please be safe out there. We know you’re working overtime, trying to get our roads where they need to be and be safe because distracted driving is a real thing, not only with commercial motor vehicles, but with passenger vehicles, too.

David Craig: Yeah, and we’ve had… We represented flaggers, we’ve represented construction workers, we represented people that worked the traffic control, the signs, all those kind of from the… Their lives are in danger when they’re out there in these construction zones. And when they get hit or they get hurt, obviously, their families are devastated. So be extra careful when you’re going through construction zones.

Ashley Napier: Yeah, absolutely. They should. I don’t think I have anything further to add. What did I miss?

David Craig: Nothing. I do think… One other thing that’s complicated about construction zone cases is that… And we touched on it, is that there’s multiple people who might be responsible. And we talked about how the bad truck drivers have limited insurance. And so most people just look at it and say, “Okay, it’s a truck driver’s fault.” Well, a truck accident attorney, somebody that’s board-certified in truck accident law who handles these type of cases on a regular basis, they’re going to look at that and say, “Well, who else might be responsible?” And so there might be a broker involved.

Ashley Napier: Absolutely.

David Craig: There could be a shipper involved, logistics companies. There could be the state, whichever state you’re in, they could have not designed the highway properly. There could be a contractor, the construction company. But then we’ve sued multiple… Like the signage companies. There’s all these subcontractors who also might be responsible. So the reality is these cases are extraordinarily complicated in order to justify… And they all fight tooth and nail. And so, getting a truck accident attorney quickly is extraordinarily important because you want to preserve the evidence. You want somebody to get out there, scan it with a drone, go out there, photograph it, look for the signage, look and see.

And that stuff changes overnight. And so you need to get out there and you need to get hired. Plus truck records, some of them they can get rid of within six months. So time is of the essence. I know the families of the victims, they’re suffering and they’re dealing with devastation or loss, planning funerals or sitting in a hospital room. But somebody that’s close to them needs to look out for them and say, “Hey, look, time is of the essence. We need to move quickly. We need to protect the family and see if there’s…” Everybody that’s responsible should be held accountable.

Ashley Napier: Absolutely. I mean, the trucking company has people on the ground, what, at the time of the wreck most of the time? Especially if it’s a fatality. So it’s a no-brainer, but when you’re dealing with everything that’s going on from hospitals to funerals to everything, just somebody be an advocate for those family members and the families that are touched by this. And I think, too, you mentioned it, that the state can be involved. There are time limits that people need to be aware of or your claim against a state, county, whatever it is, could be forever gone.

David Craig: In the state of Indiana, that’s true. Now every state’s different. But the reality is that there may be time sensitive deadlines that are a lot shorter when the government’s involved. And so you want to look at that. And then I think finding an attorney that has a rapid response team that can get out there, protect the scene, look at the scene. An attorney who gets his hands on. I mean, I literally will go out oftentimes and look at these scenes, try to figure out, and there’s been times when I’ve done the inspection of the vehicle or I’ve been at the scene where I’ve seen something that made a huge difference in my client’s case that had I not been there, I may have missed.

So I would encourage people to make sure you get the right attorney. I just heard another lawyer say, “If you had a great case and a terrible lawyer, a great case plus a terrible lawyer equals a bad case.” And you don’t think about that because people think, “Well, guys, lawyers are qualified to handle,” and they’re not all. You don’t want me handling your divorce. You don’t want to have me handling your will because I can’t do those very well, but I can do truck cases. And there’s other lawyers who can do truck cases, but you have to look and do your research and make sure you pick the right ones.

Ashley Napier: Yeah. You don’t want the JV quarterback playing for what, a college team or that football analogy just because it’s Indiana.

David Craig: You wouldn’t want those Ohio state lawyer quarterbacks.

Ashley Napier: Hey now, my Buckeyes are going to come back. Maybe. I don’t know. My husband and I’ll have something to say about that with the IU, but neither here nor there, go Hoosiers. But I think that is it for me. This edition of After the Crash, thank you all for watching. Be sure to check out semicrashmap.com for some of the info that we were talking about in this month’s episode. And if you have any comments, questions, concerns, you can always reach out to us via email. We look forward to hearing from you guys. See you in August. Bye.

David Craig: Thanks for listening to another episode of After the Crash. If you or someone you know has been involved in a semi-truck wreck and you want to talk, go to ckflaw.com or give me a call at 1-800-ASK-DAVID. If you want additional information about semi-truck wrecks or how to pick the right attorney, check out my two books, Semitruck Wreck: A Guide for Victims and Their Families, or It’s Never Been easier to Hire the Wrong Attorney. Both of them are available on Amazon, or you can download them for free on our website, ckflaw.com.