Beech Tree News Network

A Morgantown woman working in a road crew was injured Thursday after trying to escape from an oncoming vehicle in a construction zone on Interstate 65.

Tonya Pannell, 52, was directing traffic near a stalled semi-truck when she saw an approaching vehicle and attempted to climb the barrier wall. The vehicle swerved to avoid the semi and struck the wall, at which point Pannell fell onto the car's hood and then flipped over the wall, according to a news release from the Department of Highways.

Pannell, an employee of Scotty’s Contracting Traffic Control, is recovering from a broken foot and several scrapes and bruises. The accident occurred on I-65 southbound between Elizabethtown and Glendale. 

“Construction folks spend every workday around near misses," Chris Jessie, public information officer and incident management coordinator for the Department of Highways in Elizabethtown, said in a statement to media. "Countless stories of what ‘almost happened’ never make headlines. Our friends and families – the general public’s friends and families – are just inches from tragedy every day.”

Motorists' inattention in construction zones is a cause for concern, with nearly 80 percent of all crashes and 65 percent of near-crashes involving some form of driver inattention within three seconds prior to an event, according to a news release from the district.

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Bowling Green Daily News

Kentucky Press News Service

Date: 07-26-2016