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Paging @ToaKraka, since you're the resident civil engineer/rules aficionado, I have a question about construction zone safety, and what I can do to combat the rash of confusing and/or nonsensical flagging situations that seem to have proliferated in the past year or two. Last night I was sitting at a 5-way intersection in the southbound center lane, intending to continue on the same road. There is also a left turning lane for those making one of two left-hand options, as well as a lane for those turning right. The lane I was traveling in, on the far side of the intersection (about 200' away), was blocked by construction vehicles, a sign saying "Road Work Ahead", and two flaggers, one with a flag and one with those light batons. The opposing lane of traffic had cars sitting at the light traveling northbound, and at some point one of the flaggers waved them through. The light was operating throughout this whole time so I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to follow the light or the flaggers, but when I had the first cycle of green there was nowhere for me to go so I just sat there watching the flaggers who, mind you, were 200' away from me.
At one point the guy with the light batons, who was standing near the trucks behind the guy with the flag, started doing some dance that I at first couldn't tell if it was because he was trying to direct traffic or because he was bored, but it soon became obvious that it was the latter. Then the guy with the flag started making a waving motion that was so vague I couldn't tell which cars he was waving through or where he wanted them to go, but given that I had been sitting there a while and the northbound lane was clear I interpreted to mean that that lane was available for southbound traffic. Of course, as soon as I start heading for the open lane the guy starts yelling "No" quite loudly, and I have to beat a retreat to making a right turn, which was only a minor detour but still irritating given that I knew as soon as I saw the construction that I wasn't going to be given any straightforward instructions.
To summarize: There were two guys controlling a road at an intersection with four approaches, two of which were too far away to see anything clearly, the other two with bad sight lines. One of the guys was treating his traffic control device like a toy. There was no signage indicating that the southbound lane was closed, or any posted detour. A simple sign indicating that the road was closed would have been sufficient, but instead they seemingly decided to create a situation that was intentionally confusing in the hope that people would just not bother. I was half tempted to pull up and roll down my window and demand to speak to who was in charge of this and see a safety plan, lie about being an engineer from PennDOT and make up a state law saying that the contractor had to have a copy of the safety plan on site that was available upon request.
If this were an isolated incident I wouldn't care that much, but something similar has happened about a half dozen times, all in the past year or two, once last summer at the exact same intersection. I don't recall it happening at all in the previous 20 years of driving, so either I'm getting dumber or people are getting more lax. I'm sure there's some way to lodge a formal complaint, but that's no fun. I want to know what the actual regulations and best practices are so I can go into full-blown dick mode the next time this happens and have some ammunition to back me up. I can understand if this was some kind of emergency repair but they repaved the entire road last summer and have been doing more work for the past week.
Tell me you're in Western PA without telling me you're in Western PA.
They’ve got plenty of 5-point intersections where I come from, and I’m nowhere near PA.
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