Today marks the start of National Work Zone Awareness week

Roads being worked on are some of the deadliest roads in Missouri.

Today, marks the first day of National Work Zone Awareness week.

MoDOT tells ABC 17 that there’s a road worker crash every 5 and a half minutes in the U.S.

Not only that, in Missouri, sixteen people were killed in work zone areas last year, which has doubled since 2016.

MoDOT Central District told us they lost one of their very own. Justin Sundell, a senior maintenance worker at MoDOT said he lost a colleague last year while being hit on the job.

“It hits home for me very, very much so and I think about it all the time and I don’t ever want to go back to that, ever again,” Sundell said.

Sundell said he hopes that the awareness week will educate people, “I’m very, very passionate about our work zone safety and making sure we all go home safe each and every single night.”

He said the main problem is “if we see 20 people drive past in their cars, 15 of them will be on their cell phones, that’s 75 percent, that’s too high.”

David Silvester, an engineer at MoDOT said this week is about reminding people about work zone safety. He said with summer around the corner, people should expect to see a lot more maintenance and construction work on the roads.

“That’s what we ask folks, to pay attention. We have too many works that get struck, too many people that get killed in work zones and it’s not just the people that work on the roads, we have a lot of work zone accidents, a lot of other drivers are getting involved in work zone crashes,” said Silvester.

MoDOT has lost 138 workers since 1932 and MoDOT hopes this week’s awareness will help reduce those numbers.

MoDOT said that start-up construction will begin in the next couple of weeks and to pay attention, plan accordingly, buckle-up and put the phone down.