Untitled Document

Profiler van video shows friendly roadside guest

ITD pavement management engineer Karen Merrick drives every mile of state highway in Idaho. She usually makes the trips to every district in the fall, driving with district materials engineers and discussing pavement projects, successes and issues.

She looks at the pavement condition and notes the severity and extent of cracking, and types of cracking, in every pavement section. Considered a “windshield survey,” it leads to ITD's annual pavement condition (good/fair) percentage.

When she finishes the physical drives, she returns to the office and continues the pavement survey by using the video log from the department’s profiler van. That video is collected on every state highway annually and has a downward facing camera so Karen can see the pavement condition and rate the roads she didn’t have time to see in the field.

One morning, she was watching the video of U.S. 95 south of Grangeville, looking for a recent turn bay project by District 2 around milepost 239. As the video van approached the construction zone, Karen noticed that one of the contractor drivers, Cook and Sons, had an unexpected — but very friendly — visitor.

The left shoulder camera of the video van was able to capture the visit in excellent clarity and is shown here as a still image.