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In the last three years, 465 incidents of road worker abuse have been reported in Birmingham.
They have had enough and launched a social media campaign – Expect Respect – to persuade the public to respect highway maintenance crews.
Road workers in Birmingham have been threatened with machetes, crossbows and dogs. A motorist threatened to chop off an operative’s head with an electric handsaw unless he was allowed through a closed road. One worker was shot at with a pellet gun while another regularly receives homophobic abuse.
The campaign has been launched by the Integrated Programme Alliance (IPA), which delivers roadworks across the city and was established by Birmingham City Council and Birmingham Highways Ltd, together with Kier, Arcadis, Tarmac, Highway Traffic Management (HTM) and WJ Group.
The Expect Respect campaign will run for six weeks across Birmingham City Council and partner social media channels.
A Kier Highways site supervisor, who name was given as just Paul, said: “The people I work with are not confrontational. They are good people, there to do a job that they have been instructed to do. Yet they have been threatened with machetes, shot at, driven at, had things thrown at them. And what for? Just because somebody wants to drive down the road that must be closed for safety reasons? Road workers are there to do a job and earn a living. We should respect that and afford the people in these jobs the right to earn that living.”
To support road workers and to provide the police with better evidence, Birmingham Highways has invested in CCTV towers, body cameras and warning systems to alert workers when people or vehicles enter a live work site.
Birmingham Highways technical director Dave Pugh said: “Over 800 people across our IPA teams are working hard to improve the standards of the roads in Birmingham, and they deserve our respect. The work they do is vital to the safety and efficiency of our roads, and we hope that the proud people of Birmingham will support our workers and call out any incidences of abuse or assault to collectively help stamp out this shocking behaviour.”
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