Patrick Burr was ready to take a mid-day break from his twice-weekly trek hauling auto parts from his home base of Knoxville, Tenn., to Toronto.
Seated in his semi-trailer in the Interstate 75 rest station just northeast of Ohio 129 near Liberty Twp., Burr contemplated the construction route ahead of him dotted with narrow lanes and sharp turns in Warren County — where the number of accidents have increased since the widening began — and through Dayton.
“This is a pretty tough section,” Burr said. “The road really constricts, everybody’s still pushing to get through fast ... It’s not easy driving.”
Driving such a large vehicle through miles of unrelenting construction makes being one of the “big boys” of the highway difficult, according to Burr and many of his truck-driving brethren.
Commercial trucks constitute slightly more than 20 percent of the approximate 90,000 vehicle that travel the Warren County portion of I-75 daily, according to the Ohio Department of Transportation.
In the past three years, commercial vehicles were involved in 358 crashes in Butler County and 350 crashes in Warren County, according to the Ohio State Highway Patrol. Those numbers are 23 percent and 27 percent of the total number of crashes in each county since 2008, the year construction began in Butler County.
In the three years prior to construction, 265 accidents in Butler County involved commercial trucks while Warren County had 209 such crashes, according to the highway patrol.
One factor for the increase, truck drivers said, are the occasional shrinking lanes.
Along the Butler and Warren construction zones, at times highway lanes have narrowed from the standard 12 feet across to 10-11 feet, said Walter Bernau, a safety specialist for ODOT.
Stretches near the Ohio 123 exit in Franklin, and again through Moraine and Dayton feature patches of road where lanes turn sharply, cross medians and veer away from normal paths, truck drivers said.
“During the rush hours, the roads are really stressful,” said Paul Dhinel, an Ontario-based trucker who routinely hauls paper products south on I-75. “It’s really difficult to have to watch your driving and make sure you are looking out for everyone else.”
To ease some of the danger, ODOT has limited the width of a truck allowed to drive on a road, Bernau said.
For the ODOT project along Warren County on I-75, the maximum width a truck can be is 8.6 feet according to Sharon Smigielski, an ODOT spokeswoman.
“The majority of safety concerns for trucks are the same as passenger vehicles,” Bernau, said. “Stay within speed limits, allow for space to brake, don’t distract yourself with unnecessary things like phones. The problem is trucks are so much bigger and drivers don’t always understand the added leeway that comes with that size.”
Truck drivers concur.
“Cars don’t give trucks enough space,” Burr said, noting drivers of cars often try to cut trucks off at the last second in order to squeeze through a traffic jam.
Sometimes truckers aware of impending construction and congestion will look for alternative routes although many are just as slow as the back-ups they are trying to avoid. Other times an alternate route is simply not there, meaning drivers’ patients can be tested.
“Downtown Dayton is about the worst construction I see on my route,” Dhinel said.
“And I feel like it’s been going on forever. Franklin and Middletown is kind of rough, especially southbound, but it’s usually moving at least.”