Union Leaders Call for Safety Reform After Maryland Highway Worker Deaths

On April 25, 40-year-old Maryland highway worker Robert Dempsey was struck by a car and killed while setting up cones for traffic control on the Capital Beltway.

Just three days later, Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) employee Dipakkumar Patel, 70, died at the scene after a minivan struck the work vehicle Patel was sitting in on Route 13 in Somerset County.

In the wake of these deaths, union officials are urging Maryland state transportation leaders to improve safety measures for highway workers.

As reported by Maryland Matters, leaders of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) met with Kathryn Thomson, Maryland’s state transportation secretary, within days of the fatal accidents.

Speaking outside MDOT’s Hanover, Md. headquarters after the meeting, AFSCME Council 3 President Patrick Moran described the meeting as productive, while calling for increased safety efforts.

“That’s the biggest thing,” said Moran, whose union has more than 50,000 members, including roughly 26,000 in state government, according to Maryland Matters.

“People see a trooper on the side of the road and they get over. They see a road truck, a road crew … and it’s like, ‘Oh, it’s just a road crew. I can’t get a ticket from the road crew.’ So, they’re just barreling through, and then something bad happens.”

In a statement, MDOT expressed outrage over the “recent deaths of two dedicated public servants,” while characterizing the “continued disregard for roadway workers” as “unacceptable.”

Moran said AFSCME outlined “a number of things that we need to see in order to continue to move forward” during the meeting with Thomson, adding that “we had her full attention on those issues.”

For example, Moran said that more in-person training is needed for highway workers, in addition to better equipment and protective gear, stronger barriers, more trucks, and better promotion and enforcement of Maryland’s Move Over Law, according to Maryland Matters.

Thomson “is more than willing” to work with AFSCME on addressing these issues, Moran said, “because she realizes the need for change in the way they approach things, especially in SHA [State Highway Administration] and especially out on the roads.”