Work Zone Awareness Week

Fond du Lac County Highway Commissioner Tom Janke says National Work Zone Awareness Week means a little more to his department because they lost one of their employees in a highway work zone accident in December of 2003. Dennis Roeseler was hit and killed by a van while doing some maintenance work on then Highway 41. That was before the state increased the speed limit on I-41 to 70 miles an hour. Janke says if it gets too dangerous their workers are taken off of the interstate. He says, “We have been pulled off of 41 on a lot of general maintenance projects where the State Patrol or DOT will say you know what you’re done it is just getting too dangerous out there for both the traveling public as well as our guys so we’ll end up having to pull off and do other things.” There were over 2,700 accidents in road construction and maintenance zones in Wisconsin last year. Janke says, “A little over 1,067 injuries and six deaths are the preliminary figures in 2017. There has been over 2,000 work zone crashes each year in the last three years as well.” There is a monument near the Hickory and Pioneer roundabout in Fond du Lac dedicated to the memory of Roeseler and other highway workers killed on the job.