Aim High

By David Howard

As a contractor working on rural highway projects across the Midwest, we have for years delivered a proprietary training program to our full time staff to promote safe driving skills.  This program emphasizes five keys to safe driving, with one key being to aim high when driving.   

Simply put, the driver is instructed to look up toward the horizon of the roadway in front of them, not just the roadway immediately in front of them.   Practicing this technique quickly verifies the value…our vision picks up what is immediately in front of us when we dedicate our focus to the horizon, but the opposite is not true.  

I, along with the men and women I work with in highway construction work zones, have seen all too often what can occur when a driver is not aiming high with their vision.   Slow or stopped traffic within our work zones can be missed by a driver that is not aiming high until it is too late, and the results can truly be catastrophic.  

I am very proud of how seriously our employees take safety, but I know we are a part of a small group of our population that truly understands how all alone we feel when an accident occurs on a rural highway and we, men and women simply doing our jobs building or repairing highways, must do what we wish to never do…become first responders to an accident.

Please let that first orange “Road Construction Ahead” sign you see be a reminder to aim high.

 David Howard is the President/CEO of Koss Construction Company.