Anyone who drives must have noticed all the striped orange barrels, yellow earth-moving equipment and white-helmeted workers who have emerged from winter hibernation to be exposed again to the perils of improving some of New Jersey's 36,000 miles of linear roads.

These guys and gals share ranks with the 600 to 700 who are killed nationwide each year in work-site road crashes that claim motorists, cops, pedestrians and others — 10 of whom died on New Jersey roadways in 2009, according to grisly statistics compiled by the National Work Zone Safety Information Clearinghouse.

"We've got at least 200 highway and bridge projects like this one going on throughout the state," Deputy Transportation Commissioner Joseph Mrozek told reporters in North Brunswick on Tuesday as workers behind him continued a $24.1 million rehabilitation project on a Route 1 overpass. "Luckily, we've had only a few fender benders here."

But luck doesn't always hold, so Mrozek's offered this simple message as he kicked off National Work Zone Awareness Week on a day so windy and rainy that taillights and orange barrels became a streaky windshield blur: Slow down at work sites to make it safer for everyone, including "our friends and neighbors who work there."

Ray Martinez had an even stronger message:

"Things are getting real complicated on our highways," said the Motor Vehicle Commission's chief administrator. "Traffic patterns are changing and roads are being closed, so we all have to remain focused on the road, not on food or electronic gadgets like cellphones. Ultimate responsibility rests with drivers."

New Jersey is one of eight states that ban handheld phones while driving, and it is one of 30 that prohibit texting. New Jersey is also one of 35 states that double fines for work-zone speeding violations, although it has not joined five that use cameras to record violations there.

"It's not about collecting fines," Martinez insisted. "It's about safety. We'd like nothing better than to have a year without any deaths at work sites."

Only Kansas, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Vermont, Puerto Rico and West Virginia met the zero-fatalities standard at work zones in 2009, according to the clearinghouse. Washington, D.C., and three states — Alaska, Rhode Island and Washington — recorded just one death each.

New Jersey ranked 23rd in work-zone fatalities among the 50 states, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. Its 10 work zone deaths amounted to 1.7 percent of total traffic deaths in 2009 — slightly below the 2 percent national average and way below Minnesota (4.7 percent) and both Oregon and Utah (4.5 percent each). But its record was considerably higher than two other urban states — New York and Ohio — where work-zone fatalities accounted for less than half of 1 percent of all road deaths.

Researchers are still trying to understand the dynamics of work-zone crashes. Do most occur at the beginning or end of a queue? Or in the middle?

"If we knew that, we could put more resources into making it safer at the most dangerous stage," said Dennis Motiani, director of traffic operations for the New Jersey Department of Transportation.

Research shows that 20 percent to 25 percent of crashes in any long line occur near the tail end. But it's not clear whether this dynamic holds up at work sites. Motiani is participating in an 18-month study conducted by Rutgers University and the New Jersey Institute of Technology that's analyzing data to find answers.

Stages aren't the sort of thing that road warriors generally think about when negotiating work zones, but knowing which location is the riskiest phase of this short journey couldn't hurt.

There are four phases, according to Motiani:

* The heavily signed area at the start of the work zone
* The tapered area where the number of lanes is reduced
* The work area itself
* The end where cars reenter normal traffic

Staying safe requires paying close attention to such things, especially "the location of road workers, whose jobs often put them extremely close to traffic, and the movement of vehicles," said Gary Poedubicky, acting director of the state Division of Highway Traffic Safety.

If these facts can't persuade drivers to move cautiously in work zones, maybe this one can: Only 15 percent of people killed at these sites were working there; the rest were drivers and passengers just passing through.

Road Warrior runs Wednesday, Friday & Sunday. E-mail: cichowski@northjersey.com.
Blog: http://blogs.northjersey.com/blogs/roadwarrior.