Asphalt resurfacing, milled pavement, chip sealing

I had an accident on July 15.  The stretch of road I was travelling on had been milled leaving the sewer manholes and water valves sticking up 2 to 4 inches.  The crash occured on a city strret during rush hour.  The construction zone was not marked and no signage was in place warning of uneven or rough pavement.  Had I known the road was in this condition I easily could have taken a different route.  A car, two cars ahead of me unexpectedly slammed on brakes and stopped to make a left turn.  When I hit my brakes the bike lost traction on the milled pavement and skidded.  I then hit a manhole cover sticking up about 3 inches higher than the road.  I went down, hard.  

In light traffic these raised utilities are not a problem because you can see them but in heavy traffic it can be hard to dodge them.  This same contractor was also chip sealing on some of the side roads.  Chip sealing is an old method of resurfacing.  Typically, gravel is spread across an asphalt surface and then sprayed with a liquid asphalt mix.  This is more economical than using superpave asphalt.  However, this contractor had no signs in place warning of loose gravel and left several of the streets in this condition overnight.  This shows either, ignorance or a total disregard for the safety of bikers.

Several states have adopted more stringent policies to make the roads safer in work zones.  This needs to be mandated at the Federal level.  There needs to be active lobbying to demand safer construction practices and methods for resurfacing. Any thoughts?  

aarrrggh! Sometimes, I despise this satellite link. I spend half an hour typing up a reply then hit post, only to see the 404 error and then notice the satellite modem indicates no connection. The reply went into the bit bucket, beyond recovery.

So, here's the short version.

A few disconnected thoughts...

The only hard and fast rule I know of for motorcycling is this. When you get in a crash, you get hurt. Everything else changes with the circumstances.

There is no substitute for experienced judgement. Training can *help* you survive marginal situations, while you are trying to develop experienced judgement, but there are no guarantees. No laws, safety devices or signs, nor any combination of those can compensate for inadequate judgement.

There is no safety, this side of the grave. Motorcycling is more inherently unsafe than most other forms of transportation.

If you want road maintenance areas to be less unsafe, then you need to start by lobbying for increased taxes to pay for the increased costs resulting from the increased regulation and elimination of awarding contracts to the "lowest bidder". Do not expect my support in this effort.

regards,
Joe  

It is impossible to resurface a road and not expose the water valves, gas valves, catch basins, and manholes. We could require the contractor to remove and then reconstruct them, but this would cause resurfacing project costs to go through the roof. I'm sorry you had an accident, but hopefully you learned a valuable lesson. When riding through construction zones where resurfacing is taking place, watch out for those raised objects. Leave enough space between you and the vehicle ahead of you so you have enough time to avoid these hazards.

Otter
2006 Yamaha Stratoliner S
Ohio  

I know this is a few months old but I felt compelled to throw this in.

If you (you means anyone reading this) see grooved pavement you are guaranteed to see at least 2 things:  a lip of 2 to 4 inches at each end of the project and at every intersecting cross street, and every structure within the project will be raised at about the same 2 to 4 inches (sometime more).  Hard to say exactly where they will fall in the road but you should know that they are there.  Hopefully this will increase your awareness level a little when you enter this type of area.

Chip sealing sucks and I have long despised its practice since before I even thought of becoming a rider.  It is a band aid, in lieu of paving, usually because the towns cannot find the funds to do it right.

On Federally funded projects, and most state projects (at least in my state), proper signing and advance warning is taken very seriously.  If you enter a construction site and there are no signs anywhere, then the it is usually negligence on the contractor's part.  In my experience, most contractors are pretty good about getting their signs up, but on those projects that have either very little oversight or none at all (inspection), some contractors will try to get away with not putting out any because it takes too much time or costs too much.

In any case, the point is that the rules are already in place, so further legislation wouldn't serve any purpose.  You can mandate anything you want but if it isn't followed by enforcement at whatever level (federal, state or local) then it doesn't really mean anything.  

I have to point out that most contractors I know DO follow appropriate practices, but every once in a while you run across that one....(sorry I droned on there...)