The most pressing safety concern for highway workers is moving vehicles and vehicular collisions. Highway workers are often faced with dangerous driving, which puts them at risk. Drivers travelling too fast, driving into coned-off areas where road workers are working, or entering the roadworks area.

Often highways work is carried out at night when the roads are less busy, but when operations take place at night it is dark, and there are additional hazards of impaired visibility for both highway workers and road users.

Overhead or buried electrical cables and underground gas mains pose a great risk to workers. Excessive noise affects virtually all construction projects, but roadside teams face more than most and the louder an environment is, the harder it is to hear incoming hazards. In any weather, a road worker may suffer from overexertion or exhaustion as a result of the highly physical nature of their work and the fact that they are outdoors. These risks are significantly amplified when temperatures rise during the summer months.