IDOT urges drivers to slow down in work zones this summer
Jacksonville commuters face a fresh work-zone warning as Illinois logs nearly 6,195 crashes a year and 35 deaths in 2025. IDOT says most victims are motorists and passengers.
Orange barrels on the routes linking Jacksonville and South Jacksonville are more than a delay. As construction season picks up across Illinois, the Illinois Department of Transportation is warning that work zones remain dangerous places where speed, distraction and impatience can turn a routine Morgan County commute into a crash.
That warning carries local weight for drivers who move daily between Jacksonville, South Jacksonville and the surrounding state highways. IDOT’s 2026 Work Zone Safety Awareness Week proclamation said Illinois averages nearly 6,195 work zone crashes a year, causing 1,073 injuries, and preliminary 2025 data showed 35 people were killed in work zones. The proclamation said the majority of those deaths were motorists and passengers, not workers.
Paul Wappel, an IDOT spokesman, urged drivers to slow down, wear seat belts, put the phone down and obey posted speed limits. IDOT says changing conditions in work zones can challenge even the safest drivers, and that speeding or reckless driving puts motorists, passengers and crews at risk at the same time.
The state’s awareness push ran April 20-24 under National Work Zone Awareness Week and the theme “Safe Actions Save Lives,” with IDOT, the Illinois Tollway, Illinois State Police and local and industry partners taking part. For Morgan County residents, the message is especially relevant on state-maintained roads where construction, lane shifts and slower traffic can appear without much warning and where one careless move can affect everyone in the line of cars behind it.
IDOT’s current numbers also show the issue has not gone away. A 2022 department release said Illinois averaged more than 6,700 work zone crashes and more than 1,600 injuries each year at that time, while 25 people died in work zones in 2021, none of them workers. The department says crash reports feed safety program design and roadway engineering decisions aimed at preventing fatalities and injuries.
For drivers heading through Jacksonville this summer, the takeaway is simple. Treat every work zone as a live danger zone, not a nuisance, because the people most likely to die there are the ones behind the wheel or riding beside them.
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