What You Should Know About Highways and Construction Sites in Mississippi

Highways in Mississippi

Highways are the most accident-prone zones anywhere in the world and it is no different in Mississippi either. A national survey has reported Mississippi as one of the places with the highest teen driver fatality rates in the U.S. Motor vehicle accidents are the most frequent causes of injury among most personal injury cases. The U.S. Department of Justice has reported about 52% of personal injury cases were due to motor vehicle accidents.

Teens driving without a license, speeding irresponsibly, not wearing seatbelts, or texting while driving are some of the main causes of teen fatalities. As per a study by the Buhl Foundation in 2019, an average of 57,000 18-24-year-olds in Pennsylvania have their driver’s licenses suspended every year. Among the drivers aged between 15 and 19 years involved in fatal crashes, about 21% are cases of distraction due to cell phones. The risk due to text messaging while driving is almost 23 times more than driving without distractions.

Often, there’s footage of an accident on the highways appearing on national news, some grave ones too. The licensing laws for young drivers could be the contributing factor to the higher rate of teen-caused accidents. Teens, at the age of 15, can get a learner’s permit, and at the age of 16, can have their license. The resulting accident rates led to Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety suggesting several changes for the improvement of Mississippi’s Graduated Driver Licensing Law.

The major causes of highway accidents are usually not wearing seatbelts (that applies to the driver and passengers), drunk driving, and distracted driving, which includes texting or conversing. Mississippi comes right after Kentucky in the list of states with the most teen driver fatalities.

Construction Sites in Mississippi

 

The construction sites in Mississippi often generate architectural debris composed of construction and demolition debris, of the scale of thousands of tons. Almost 30% of all building materials delivered to a typical construction site usually end up as waste. With such huge volumes of architectural debris, there are laws stating the debris’ proper management and disposal. These state laws and regulations about solid waste don’t approve of unauthorized debris burning in the open. It is required to manage and dispose of such debris only at approved solid waste management facilities.

The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) developed a document to guide the management and proper disposal of such debris that could be generated from construction sites or projects for renovation or demolition in Mississippi. The MDEQ even developed a status report in the year 2017 that provided information on different activities relating to solid waste management in Mississippi. Often, the construction site-created debris could go to one of the following:

 

• • Commercial Solid Waste Disposal Facilities: This is a facility that engages in solid waste disposal for compensation. The Municipal Solid Waste Landfills and the Class I and II Rubbish sites are the common commercial facilities for solid waste disposal.

 

• • Non-Commercial Solid Waste Disposal Facilities: The solid waste received in such a facility is from a single generator and this doesn’t operate for compensation. They are also known as industrial and institutional disposal facilities.

 

• • Transfer Stations: This facilitates the transfer of solid waste from one waste vehicle to another.

 

• • Processing Facilities: Such facilities sort, shred, grind, bale, treat, and process solid waste for the facilitation of reuse, recycling, or disposal.

While Mississippi might be in the top five states with more teen-caused motor vehicle accidents, it is also the state that takes its construction site debris management seriously, with several laws and regulations in place to make it easier.