Family remembers TDOT worker killed in crash amid start of National Work Zone Safety Awareness Week

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — It’s National Work Zone Awareness Week and transportation agencies are spreading the word about the importance of moving over when you see work being done.

The Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) said 113 workers have been killed while out on the road in work zones; 65-year-old David Younger’s tragic death marked the 110th in April 2016.

“My sister had known. She had seen that there was a wreck and she said she had a gut feeling, tried to reach my dad, and he didn’t answer,” said Sarah Chavarria, David Younger’s daughter. “When he was tragically killed while working for TDOT, was it fate? Was it coincidence? He was TDOT’s 110th, and that’s what he gave of himself all the time. He gave 110% to everyone.”

Younger, a husband and father of two, was changing a tire on the side of I-40 in Hickman County just past Dickson when he was hit and killed by a semi. The milling and paving crew supervisor was one of three TDOT workers killed in a span of less than nine months that year. Eight years later, Chavarria said his legacy still lives on.

“He was a dad; he was a husband; he was a grandfather; he was a Christian man. He loved TDOT so much, he even went back and got his GED just so he could work at TDOT.”

Younger’s death highlights the risk emergency roadside crews face every single day.

In 2017, TDOT launched the Work with Us – Move Over, Slow Down safety campaign to help bring awareness to the importance of safety in work zones all year long, but it’s a message officials are still working to drive home today amid continued reports on the disturbing number of work zone crashes.

So far this year, there have already been 29 incidents where drivers crashed into equipment and vehicles. Last year in Tennessee, 22 people died in work zone crashes. That number is inclusive of resident drivers.

“It makes me frustrated to see those people that don’t move over; it makes me frustrated to see cops that don’t give tickets for the move over law,” said Chavarria. “That’s the biggest point. If you hit that person, you’re not only changing their life, their families lives and anybody that interacts with them.”

Tennessee Department of Transportation officials released a statement on Monday, April 15, that reads in part:

“We engineer our roads to be as safe as possible, but there’s no amount of engineering that can change driver behavior.”

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This year’s National Work Zone Safety Awareness Week theme is “work zones are temporary, your actions behind the wheel can last forever.” It’s a statement Chavarria hopes drivers will remember so other families won’t have to unknowingly say goodbye to their loved ones for the last time when they head off to work.

“He would always leave. When he would finish, saying ‘just remember I love you, or ditto.’ Ditto is what we would always say, because sometimes he would say, ‘I love you,’ and I’d just say, ‘Ditto,’ back, and he knew that that meant I love you,” said Chavarria.

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