Weed Whackers and Fence Fixers

I was driving on Highway 4 and came along a crew of people on the left side whacking weeds. I've seen similar crews, although they are usually picking up trash on the side of the road. They are not CalTrans employees. And, as I have before, I wondered why these people are a few feet away from my speeding car (65 MPH max., of course) with just a van and a port-o-potty between us. I have heard that many of these crews are made up of people who got busted for things like DUI. Does that mean officials figure it would serve them right if they got hit by a drunk driver? This has been bugging me lately.

Compare this to official CalTrans workers. They usually have a mile of cones, flares and flashing signs preceding their work area, which is surrounded by M1A1 Army tanks, painted orange of course.

I am NOT saying that CalTrans workers should have less protection. Some of them still get killed out there, so whatever they need for safety they should get. But why don't the cleanup crews have protection?

Then - I kid you not - about 4 miles down the road I saw an honest-to-goodness CalTrans crew. Actually, I could barely see the crew because of the vehicles in the way.
That's four big trucks on the side of the road. You can't tell from the picture, but the road drops off on that side, and down in the embankment there is another CalTrans truck which is near the chain link fence you can see in the distance. The fence is 20-30 yards from the side of the road. There are two guys finishing a job where they were patching about a 40 foot section of the chain link fence. The truck near the fence probably carried the two guys, the fence material, and all of the tools they needed to fix the fence. Did I mention that the fence is down an embankment and pretty far from the road?

So two guys were needed to fix a fence that is yards from the highway. Naturally, five huge trucks are dispatched to take care of the job.

At the same time, some weeds that are about a car's length from the highway supposedly need to be cut. So some people who maybe took a 20-minute safety class - which probably consisted of watching a video and trying to pick the least gnarly hardhat and orange vest from a box - are sent out to RISK THEIR LIVES doing what a CalTrans crew could do with one of those giant lawnmower attachments I've seen them use on their trucks.

I'm going to look into this.