The construction company Balfour Beatty has called on the government to crack down on the abuse suffered by road workers. The appeal is built around footage from body-worn cameras, which the company says shows how incidents of road rage are not only slowing the pace of repairs but also putting staff at risk as they carry out their jobs.
The evidence comes directly from the people doing the work. The clips were shot on body-worn cameras carried by Balfour Beatty workers, capturing confrontations as they happened at live work sites. The company has pointed to the recordings to make the case that aggression toward road crews is a real and recurring problem rather than an occasional one.
One piece of footage shows the scale of the frustration some drivers display. The driver in a white van, clearly unhappy that the road had been closed, simply drives up a grass verge and straight through the barriers, pushing past the very measures put in place to keep the work area safe.
Another incident captured on camera was even more alarming. Faced with roadworks on a country lane, a man moves the safety barriers out of the way so that he can drive through. Before he leaves, however, he appears to assault one of the workers, turning a traffic delay into a physical confrontation.
According to Balfour Beatty, these are not isolated cases. Staff are recording this kind of behaviour on a daily basis, and some of the incidents are extremely serious. In one of them, a worker was hit by a car and had what was described as a lucky escape, underlining how dangerous the situations can become.
It is that combination of disruption and danger that lies behind the company's call for action. By releasing the footage, Balfour Beatty is pressing the government to take steps against the abuse of road workers, arguing that the behaviour both holds up essential repairs and threatens the safety of the people carrying them out.
The company has also put figures to the problem. It says it records around 1,100 incidents a year, roughly three every day, and that 90 percent of its workers report having suffered some kind of abuse from members of the public. The majority of those incidents are low level, but about 1 percent involve physical assault, threats with weapons or vehicles being driven at people, which still amounts to around a dozen cases every year.
Despite the scale of the problem, the company says enforcement has rarely followed. It points out that it has only ever had one case that led to a confirmed prosecution, a gap between the volume of abuse recorded and the consequences faced by those responsible that underlines why it is now pressing for tougher action.