VANCOUVER, Wash. — Six road work crew members were injured in an alleged drunk driving crash Sunday night while out repairing potholes on Interstate 5 near Vancouver, according to the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT). The agency detailed the incident in a Facebook post that it said was in response to people asking for the potholes to be fixed.
"Well, here's the thing. We tried," the post said.
The crew had only been on scene for about 90 seconds when, at 9:40 p.m., a car hit the guardrail next to the shoulder lane where the maintenance vehicles were parked and then plowed into the back of one of the maintenance trucks, pushing it forward into the back of a second maintenance truck, WSDOT wrote.
Six members of the work crew were injured and taken to a hospital, WSDOT wrote, although all six have since been released and are recovering at home. The driver was arrested by Washington State Patrol troopers on suspicion of DUI, the agency said.
"After they got through the initial shock of everything, their spirits were surprisingly high," said Brad Clark, the Southwest Region Maintenace Manager. "I mean, it takes a fun bunch to be able to go out and be able to do the work that we do and then come back and still have a positive attitude. It's extremely challenging for us to try to do our work and to have that in the back of our minds that there are people that are basically putting our lives at risk.”
According to WSDOT, their southwest region has seen higher numbers of drivers crashing into their vehicles the last three years. Sixteen of their WSDOT vehicles were struck by the public in 2023, 14 in 2022 and 8 back in 2021.
"We take the utmost precautions to try to provide a safe working environment,” said Clark. “We try to do the best we can with the tools that we have and try to provide a safe work environment, but these factors are completely out of our control."
Clark told KGW this crash shook their entire Southwest WSDOT region. He said many if not all crew members who returned to work wondered if they'd be next while out patching potholes in heavily traveled areas.
"Pretty much all of the 125 people know or have worked with the people that were hit on the roadway,” said Clark. “So, if you take that and you'll have to come into work the next day thinking about, 'OK, it happened to them. They did everything right. What's going to happen to us next time?'"
WSDOT asked drivers to avoid speeding, distracted driving and driving under the influence, and to remember to be careful around road work crews.
"If it sounds like we're angry... we're angry," WSDOT wrote in the post. "This happens all too often."
This is a developing story and will be updated with more information as it becomes available.
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