“At the time of the crash, both vehicles were traveling at speeds in excess of the posted speed limit and in excess of the speed of adjacent traffic,” the NTSB said in a brief update on its investigation.
The report provided some new insights into a fatal crash in the early stages of the investigation. The deaths, which could prompt investigators to recommend new safety protocols, drew new attention to the dangers road crews face as a federally funded road construction boom gets under way of infrastructures.
Maryland State Police responded to the Baltimore County crash around 12:40 a.m. March 22 along the inner loop of Interstate 695 at Security Boulevard.
Video recorded by a Maryland Department of Transportation traffic camera and obtained by The Washington Post showed an Acura changing lanes to the left and colliding with a Volkswagen, which was in the far left lane. Video shows the work crew was largely protected by concrete barriers, but the Acura went through a gap in the wall and drove into it.
According to an initial investigation, the driver of a gray Acura TLX, later identified as a 54-year-old woman from Randallstown, Md., was attempting to change lanes when her car struck the front panel on the passenger side corner of a Volkswagen. Jetta. That caused the Acura to lose control and hit road workers before overturning, police said. The gap in the barriers was to allow construction vehicles to access the job site, the NTSB said.
Photos released Thursday by the NTSB show the Acura was heavily damaged, while the Volkswagen had damage on the passenger side.
No complaint has been filed in connection with the accident. Elena Russo, a spokeswoman for the Maryland State Police, said the investigation is still active.
Police identified the dead workers as Rolando Ruiz, 46, of Laurel; Sybil Lee DiMaggio, 46, of Glen Burnie; brothers Carlos Orlando Villatoro Escobar, 43, and Jose Armando Escobar, 52, of Frederic; and father and son Mahlon Simmons II, 52, and Mahlon Simmons III, 30, of Union Bridge. Police previously gave the younger Simmons’ age as 31.
The Maryland State Highway Administration said construction workers were on a project known as Transportation Systems Operations and Management, which aims to ease congestion on a stretch of the beltway. from Baltimore.
The NTSB is working with the state highway agency and state police in its investigation. The board has previously said it would examine speeding, work zone protection for construction workers and collision avoidance technology. The investigation is likely to last at least a year.
The board’s investigators will aim to take a comprehensive look at the accident. A recently completed NTSB highway investigation involved an examination of the vehicles, a review of road conditions, a reconstruction of the scene and interviews with those involved.
“We are still gathering information about this accident and have been obtaining data from multiple sources,” NTSB spokeswoman Sarah Taylor Sulick said. “We will assess all the data, but only after we have completed our fact-finding phase of the investigation.”
Videos and other images from the scene show the crash area was covered with concrete barriers, which experts say provide some of the best protection for highway construction crews. Two days before the accident, the American Association of Highway and Transportation Builders had written to the U.S. Department of Transportation urging federal officials to do more to protect highway construction workers as the number of projects grows as a result of the infrastructure law.
Nationwide, about 860 people died in work zone accidents in 2020 and more than 44,000 were injured, according to a National Safety Council analysis, compared with 586 people who died in one year a decade earlier. The builders’ association said up to 220 construction workers die each year.
Between 2016 and 2020, Maryland had 7,704 work zone-related crashes that injured 3,263 people, according to MDOT, while 46 people died. About half of those killed or injured were motorists, MDOT said.
Next week is National Work Zone Awareness Week, an effort by the federal government and state transportation agencies to highlight the dangers at highway construction sites.
