Should highway agents resign themselves to being victims of accidents?

• Accidents to motorway personnel and vehicles jumped by 44% between October 2021 and October 2022.

• The toll is already very heavy, with two patrol officers and a gendarme killed and 16 personnel injured in ten months.

• An accidentology that can only be curbed by changing “behaviours at the wheel.

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The profession of all dangers.

If you have an accident on a highway, they are the ones who will come to your rescue first.

If an object is lying on the road, they are the ones who will cross the tracks to retrieve it.

If you break down on the hard shoulder, they are the ones who will mark the ground to prevent a vehicle from hitting yours.

They are the patrollers, employees of motorway concessionaires or communities.

And if the Ministry of the Interior assures that the motorways constitute the safest road network, this does not prevent the "men in yellow" from being regularly victims of accidents.

Too regularly denounces Vinci, which manages nearly 4,500 km of motorways.

On October 18, in the afternoon, a Vinci Autoroutes intervention van was struck on the A89 while the patroller was securing a broken down heavy goods vehicle.

Earlier the same day, another Vinci vehicle had been the victim of an accident during an intervention on the A64.

In these two cases, no personnel were injured, a chance that is far from being the rule.

All highways combined, two patrollers and a gendarme have been killed and 16 injured in the exercise of their profession since January 1, 2022 according to the latest figures from the Association of French Highway Companies (ASFA).

“We notice an increase in risk taking”

In 2022, the ASFA counted 147 material and bodily injuries to personnel on intervention, an increase of more than 44% compared to October 2021. Sanef and Vinci alone had 83 accidents.

"It's a very significant increase which is all the more surprising as it greatly exceeds the increase in traffic", observes Christophe Boutin, ASFA's general delegate.

For him, this can be explained in particular, and mechanically, by the increase in accidents involving users: "What we notice is an increase in risk-taking, essentially attributable to speed and the use phone while driving," he says.

At the Ministry of the Interior, the same observation is made: “Among the factors identified among those presumed responsible for fatal accidents on the motorway are first of all speed (25%), alcohol (15%) then inattention “, we explain to

, while ensuring that the “motorways correspond to the safest network” with “only 8% of deaths” on the roads of France.

"The majority of accidents occur during the installation or removal of beaconing for works or during interventions on the emergency lane, it is in these cases that the personnel are the most vulnerable", notes Anne-Sophie Viennot de la Sanef.

"For me, it's behavioral"

It seems that, on the side of the motorway companies, or on the side of the communities which manage those which are not conceded, we can no longer do more.

“The training of agents is very strict, the new ones are supervised, their equipment is very visible as well as the signs put in place”, lists the spokesperson for Sanef.

Each intervention is, in addition, the subject of an upstream communication on the motorway radio and each presence of agents on the lanes is signaled on the Waze application and on the illuminated information panels...

Obviously, this is not enough.

Regularly, therefore, motorway companies launch more or less shock communication operations.

"The awareness of users, education from learning in driving schools, all these measures take time but will eventually pay off", hopes Christophe Boutin.

An optimism that the patrollers do not necessarily share: "For me, it's behavioral, people just don't pay attention and since I've been doing this job, I see that it's become worse with the appearance of cell phones", provides

a patrol from the company APRR.

So, yes, there is a weapon that could work: the “security corridor”.

This consists, for motorists, of slowing down and changing lanes if possible when they arrive near an intervention, accident or works, to free up a space of safety.

This procedure has also been enshrined in the Highway Code since 2018. “It has existed for four years and few people know what it is”, recognizes Anne-Sophie Viennot.

A lack of knowledge that the unions also deplore: “Only one thing works, it is the radars, affirms an elected Sud-Autoroutes.

The best would be to put some during each intervention, except that it is not possible.

So what then?

“Everything is done internally and externally for the safety of personnel, observes Anne-Sophie Viennot.

Driving behavior will reverse the trend.

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