The Bruce Highway between Brisbane and Rockhampton.

I traversed it a couple of days ago. The most amazing number of roadworks sites!! Many of which had no active work but still with long stretches at temporary slow speed, often for no discernible reason!

Then between Rocky and Townsville, still plenty of roadworks but at least there were some stretches of a few kilometres where one could actually do the normal speed limit!

A few things were in my mind as I drove up this goat-track:

1. The enormous amount of work going into this piece of infrastructure. I travel this road a lot. There has always been a lot of work happening on it, over the years. And yet the government (state and federal) have always received a great deal of flack about inadequate funding for infrastructure, not least the Bruce Hwy.

2. The appallingly irresponsible use of temporary speed limit signage. So much of the time it appears as though the The Dept of Transport and Main Roads, RoadTek, Evolution Traffic Control, the site managers and/or the workers don’t give a hoot about the appropriateness or otherwise of the legally-binding speed signs they were using.

3. The appalling lack of respect of these signs by most drivers, who just treat them as a rough guide to slow down a bit, and the horrible schism that this creates. Over and over again I was pincered between what a temporary speed sign dictated and what the driver behind wanted me to do.

4. The appalling lack of policing of something that has clearly blown right out of control.

How on earth could the relevant authorities have let this situation get so bad?

The police are supposedly putting in a pretty good effort at addressing speed on our main roads. You certainly see both mobile and stationary vehicles with speed cameras fairly frequently on this highway. And yet roadworks sites on these same roads are virtually be speed-free-for-all zones!

I completely don’t get it! Can anyone out there in OLOland offer any explanation??

Ludwig as you may remember this , roadworks, was my factory floor for a very long time.
It is no easy task working under and umbrella of constant abuse.
And believe me it is so when ever traffic comes in contact with road workers.
Truckers find the channel traffic controllers use and truly get down and dirty, filthy in fact at female workers.
Seems you can not win, wrong if you are not fixing the road and products of unwed parents if you are.
Night work day work it still brings the insults.
Heaping dirt up is not road works.
Nothing can be done instantly.
Road works are not just throw it about most are constructed under an American highway construction code.
We should aim at building it to last longer, believe me, until recently that was not the target making a dollar build a useless ten dollars worth of breaking up as it is constructed roads.
Councils however are far different, a single office dweller was recently convicted of selling his sole and ratepayers too, a couple of bottles of Scotch and tickets to the state of origion saw contractors more related to crime than roads get the job.

Ludwig, that section of the Bruce and the roads around it were hammered badly by the floods last year. Have a look at the Isis River crossing near Gin Gin for an example of what happened. Another day or two of rain would have seen that bridge gone - the abutments scoured out for 50 or more metres and that would have taken weeks to make a temporary fix and months to properly repair and shield against future damage. There are thousands of citrus trees in the river as well, washed down from the orchards that abound upstream.

Further north the highway is a potholed mess and the work has to be done sometime. The reason the signs are left up is that the contractor "owns" the road while the roadworks are on and has agreed to maintain a passage at that specified speed, which is related to the type/width of road, normal speed limits and other factors. I went through some works on the Gore Highway a couple of weeks ago (one lane open, the other had active work going on) at which the traffic controllers had a vehicle shuttling back and forth at the nominated speed (40 km/h) in front of the relevant stream of traffic, which was held by lollipop signs to await its arrival. Naturally that required 2 drivers to manage fatigue.

The cost must be enormous - traffic controllers are paid well.That little job would be at least $3000 a day, which would be perhaps 1/3 of the total cost of the works.

It should also be remembered that cost is added to the cost of building and repairing every km of road. Literally billions of dollars every year straight out of government funding for roads.

There must be a better way, surely. Once it was a standard practise to build diversion tracks. It doesn't cost much to run a grader along a few hundred meters of track once or twice a day , nor does a water cart once or twice an hour.

Don't forget we're talking a thousand or more kilometres & that's no easy task. I have travelled the Tablelands Nth Qld recently & have nothing but praise for quality of road work there.
On the other hand it would be a great opportunity to give many young people some work experience with the added benefit of experiencing work at the same time. Two birds with one stone ! Yeah, I know we shouldn't make the little craps get their hands dirty let alone make them so tired that it prevents them from prowling the streets at night. Bring on National service !

Thanks Antiseptic.

I have no quarrel with the amount of work being conducted there or the inconvenience it causes in the first instance.

But I have a big problem with frequently blatantly inappropriate temporary speed signs, blatant disregard for these signs from the general public and the blatant blind-eyeing of this from our police and government.

Crikey, these speed signs are supposed to be legally-binding. There is supposed to be a responsibility for them to be used properly and a regulatory regime which strives to make sure that they are properly observed.

One would have thought that when some aspect of law gets wildly out of control, there would be a much-increased effort to bring it back into line again.

What we see now is the general public treating permanent and temporary speed limit signs in a totally different manner. In my extensive experience, it is standard practice for most drivers to respect the permanent speed limit and to happily travel at a little bit over it up the highway and maintain a respectable distance behind a vehicle in front that is doing the same speed, but to then behave in a totally different manner upon entering roadworks zones.

This makes it extremely difficult if you wish to observe the signs, or something approximating them, if you have any traffic behind you!

I hate tailgating or impatient belligerent driving with a passion! I hate having some mongrel creeping up really close behind, telling me to speed up, while I am travelling at or over the speed limit!

continued

And crikey, in roadworks zones, in between the first temporary speed signs and the actual work area, this is absolutely chronic! You can often be doing more than 20kmh over the limit and still have some twat right up your rear telling you to speed up!

You could be both chronically tailgated AND get booked for exceeding the speed limit by more 20kmh at the same time!

On the highway north of Gympie a couple of days ago I had entered a roadworks zone, going from 100kmh to 80, with a large truck behind me which had been happily following at a respectable distance while I sat on 105 in the 100k zone, but which was suddenly totally intolerant of me slowing down towards 80, as per the sign that I had just passed, and then became extremely intolerant when I passed a 60 sign and had only just started to slow down towards that speed.

It would seem that these ‘professional’ truck-drivers know that they can get away with chronically exceeding the speed limit in roadworks zones, or at least in the lead-up and lead-out of the zones, on either side of the actual worksite.

Ludwig, the fact that the truckies ignore the signage is an indication that it is largely unnecessary, not that it should be more heavily enforced.

The number of accidents caused by the public travelling too fast at roadworks is exceedingly small. On the other hand, I suspect the number of accidents caused by frustrated drivers who drive excessively fast to try to make up time following an encounter with roadworks is relatively high.

Similarly, when I was taught to drive, one of the things drummed in to me was that you must clear the carriageway as much as possible after an accident, while the current accident response protocols block two lanes even for a fender-bender and call out multiple emergency responders.

Enormous expenditure that is largely needless and causes delays and frustration.

Great for GDP though and largely paid for out of Government's pocket, so who cares, eh?

Antiseptic

Yes a shuttle arrangement would be a good idea at roadworks sites where there is a propensity for vehicles to pass through well over the designated temporary speed limit.

As well as the one-lane situation that you mention, it could easily be done where traffic is moving through in both directions at the same time.

If the authorities were really concerned about drivers travelling slowly past workers, this would be a very simple and effective way of dealing with it.

But it seems that most of the time they are not bothered at all by vehicles doing well in excess of the signs they have put up.

It certainly would appear that they often put up signs 20kmh slower than what they should be because they know vehicles will not observe anywhere near the stated speed.

I have also on quite a few occasions observed workers driving within their own roadworks sites at well in excess of the applied speed limit!

All drivers are supposed to be responsible for observing the road rules and are at risk of incurring heavy penalties if they don’t. The same needs to apply to those responsible for implementing the appropriate temporary speed limit signage and other safety measures, and the regulation thereof.

Currently, it obviously doesn’t. They seem to be able to act highly irresponsibly with impunity.

I take photos of inappropriate speed signs and the like. I have accumulated quite a collection over the last few years!

As for diversionary tracks around the site, yes a good idea, where practical.

<< Ludwig, the fact that the truckies ignore the signage is an indication that it is largely unnecessary, not that it should be more heavily enforced. >>

Yes I agree that it is largely unnecessary. So the onus should be placed upon the responsible authorities to make it more appropriate.

But no I don’t agree that it shouldn’t be more heavily enforced. Whether it is appropriate or not, it is technically legally-binding and surely needs to be enforced, especially when there is chronic disobedience.

Luddy the fact that the cops don't enforce roadwork speed limits highlights the bl00dy awful job the roadwork gangs do with signage.

Huge lengths of restricted speed, with no work going on is sure to train drivers to ignore these restrictions, & for the cops to obviously agree that enforcement is unnecessary.

If intelligent use of restrictions was made, the public would be more inclined to obey the signs, & roads workers would be safer.

Just this week our brilliant council had a team restrict the parking on both sides of the road, for 100 meters right through a cluster of medical practitioners. They did this on Monday morning, with witches hats, road signs, no parking signs & such. It took them some hours, & eliminated 6 disabled parking bays.

By Wednesday afternoon, when I had to get a scan, not one worker had appeared, & most of the witches hats, & much other gear had been dragged out of the way by frustrated drivers, & cars were parking as usual. I don't know if the cops were booking people, but I doubt it.

One advantage of country towns is the cops mostly live there, & can't be as anal as many in the city. Now if we could just get rid of no hoper council supervisors, some sense might prevail.

Oh & mate, you want to make sure you are in front of a nicely painted classic. To avoid stone chips on our pride & joy, we sit way way back.

Antiseptic nice to see you active.
But I see things differently, traffic controllers, the firm not its staff fight hard and cut prices for the job.
Not so long ago traffic controllers appeared on the books as security, far less pay far less insurance.
In NSW almost every long term job has bad smashes and deaths.
Truckers are not saints, some could not read this, it can be a dumping place for fools.
Cost a third of the whole? no near true mate.

On the little job I was referring to, absolutely a third of the whole cost. 4 controllers on full-time, plus 2 vehicles and someone to relieve at shift-change. It was just a little reseal and pothole repair on about 500m of highway. Only about 6 crew working on it and no heavy plant.

That was my point about managerialism: on a major job, with complex works, that might have been a reasonable way to approach the job, but on a tiny little bit of a job it was way over the top.

Sure, truckies aren't saints, but they're normally pretty good at not driving into things.

<< Luddy the fact that the cops don't enforce roadwork speed limits highlights the bl00dy awful job the roadwork gangs do with signage. >>

Yes I guess that is true, Hazza. You would hope that if there was a real risk of mishap that the cops would police these zones. The fact that they don’t points to the very low likelihood of this. Well… it would if we could have faith in the cops to do the right thing and prioritise their efforts according to need… which I don’t at all.

Actually, there has to be some increased risk in these roadworks zones, because you have a mix of vehicles blatantly ignoring the speed limits and those who more or less observe them, despite the godawful tailgating and bullying that they get. I’ve observed it over and over again – law-abiding vehicles get chronically tailgated all the time in roadworks zones, and this has surely got to significantly increase the chances of mishap.

<< Huge lengths of restricted speed, with no work going on is sure to train drivers to ignore these restrictions.. >>

<< If intelligent use of restrictions was made, the public would be more inclined to obey the signs, & roads workers would be safer. >>

Absabloodylootely!

I understand your view antiseptic, my words come from 22 years in road construction and repair then 10 as union official looking after the workers there.
One of the hidden costs came during my time in construction.
Once we found good gravel[ fill] on the roadside using as much as we liked.
And many of todays rest areas and truck stop came in to being after we used ex quarries.
These days ten truck load, and often a single day uses hundreds, of crushed road base is worth near twice the cost of traffic control that day.
Road building is complex and we too often, see coal face management knowing the end product will fail.
But, in NSW at least, recycled DMR.RTA/ failed engineers take their past failures to local government and continue, to fail.

The point is that things can be done better than they are now.

The "chain of responsibility" that applies within workplace health and safety legislation means that they won't be, because at every step there will be some minor manageralist saying "I don't want to be held accountable if something happens, so I'll put a process in place - that will cover my bum" and the ones given the job of implementing the process get told to never, ever deviate from it or great calamities will befall them. Nobody ever looks at the rules laid down and says "I think they're a bit restrictive so I'll change them to make them easier to live with", since that's asking for trouble if anything happens later, whether the process was at fault or otherwise.

So things keep getting more and more ridiculously process-bound and costs of compliance keep rising and workers are treated ever more like parts of a machine, while the public get frustrated and service levels decline.

On the subject of roadmaking materials, I have worked on jobs where they were being carted up to 300km from the nearest source. Even in central NSW, at Yass, material was being carted from as far as Marulan and in some cases further. The problem there is NIMBYism with respect to quarries, as well as the high cost of implementing processes for compliance with regulations when developing a quarry.

There are lots of old quarries on rural properties everywhere, but few are legally able to operate, when once they were a handy source of income for the cocky.

The rule of law is steadily being eroded in this country.

Why can’t our government simply strive to make the law and accepted behaviour match where they have become discrepant?

Surely this is of fundamental importance. You’ve got to think very poorly indeed of any government that doesn’t do this…. which appears to be every federal and state government that has been in power for the last few couple of decades at least.

The bullsh!t carry-on at roadworks sites all over the country could surely be easily remedied if the authorities just had it in their minds to do so!

It is absolutely terrible in Queensland. But it is even worse in South Australia, where they use 25kmh signs abundantly at roadworks! At least they never use anything less than 40 in Qld!

The same happens in NSW Ludwig. The short answer is because they (government) don't care. That is to say don't care any more than the average person (enough to do something about it). Send a 100 word Votergram into the Queensland Parliament identifying the problem areas and there is a good chance that they will start to care and rectify much of what angers you.Only cost you $19.80, not much for a more pleasant trip.

Luddy you know the answer to all your problems, you're just trying to avoid it.

Go get yourself a proper car. Something with rear wheel drive, 6 speed manual gearbox, low slung, & with a respectable bit of power, & NO MUD FLAPS.

Now you have those tailgaters at your mercy, particularly on those gravel road works.

Just a good squirt in second will throw enough gravel out back to have even the hardened tailgater dropping well back.

Now you can do a pendulum drive, swinging the tail right & left with little squirts of throttle, as long as you're on that gravel.

I don't doubt that just a couple of months of such fun, [if you still have a license] will have you complaining that there are not enough road works to play with. You'll be looking for gravel back roads to go play on.

I do remember being shocked when I discovered some years back that they had ripped up the 74Km of bitumen road from Woodenbong to Tenterfield, because the council could not afford the maintenance.

Faced with 74Km of deep loose dust, I almost went back. Once I started sliding around all the curves, I had a ball. Hadn't had so much fun since I sold the Brabham.

I did have to spend 2 days finding & elimination all the squeaks & rattles that bumpy run had developed in my old Triumph TR7, but it was worthy it. I hadn't driven like that for 30 years, & didn't know I still could.

I'm sure you could become addicted too.

Just put a cardboard replica of a TV camera at the Rockhampton end and Transport Minister Scott Emerson aka the Minister for Shameless Self-Promotion (MESS for short) will Segway along it in his turban for a photo opportunity, scattering media releases as he goes.

Last seen the frowning Scott was bravely castigating and blaming old people for all that is wrong on the roads and he will make them front up for annual health checks as the ultimate solution (the roads equivalent of '42'). As if seniors don't see the doctor enough already LOL

Yep, definitely the fault of those old prunes. They might not go on the road much or go far when they do, but they are definitely too slow, obeying the road rules as they are inclined to do!

I think Problem #2 in your list serves as an explanation for Problems #3 and #4. The temporary speed limits are ridiculous and rarely reflect the 'safe' speed for travel along that stretch of road. Antiseptic explains that quite well - I had never thought of it that way.

However, because the limit is so completely unreasonable, it gets ignored. Sadly, many drivers cannot distinguish between the necessary speed reductions when roadworks ARE happening or conditions ARE changed and the unnecessary speed reductions when the road may undergo some work in the near future or may have undergone work in the near past. This must endanger both the drivers and the roadworkers.

I agree - there must be a better way!

This is all just a temporary problem. It seems likely that within my lifetime the idea of a car being under the individual and idiosyncratic control of a driver will be seen as intolerably risky at all but the slowest speeds. The first steps toward autonomous vehicles have been taken, both in passenger cars that can drive on normal roads entirely without a driver and on mine sites, where robotic autonomous haul trucks are being deployed on some sites already.

When it becomes the norm, then the roadworks problem disappears (and quite likely, so do most of the roadworkers, replaced by robotic plant - sorry Belly). The passengers probably won't even notice, being too busily occupied within the vehicle and any time lost could be made up by increased speed on the open sections, assuming such an autonomous vehicle would even have to stop when it is in communication with the roadworks plant and safety systems.

I really love riding my motorbike fast and well and I'm an enthusiastic and fairly competent driver of all powered vehicles. I'm not looking forward to the day those things are only done as historical events (or likely, not at all), despite the danger and the inconvenience of imperfect roads and roadworks.

I was going to have a rant about automation and the place of humans in a world run by machines, perfect servants of process that never fail to cross every arbitrary "t", or dot every inconsequential "i", but I think I'll leave it for another thread. Suffice to say that it seems difficult to conceive of such a world being anything but dystopian, with the vast majority of people having little to occupy their time or stimulate their thoughts and spending a large part of their lives bored witless, unable to influence events and eventually, unable to even imagine it would be possible to do so.

Hi Antiseptic, they will have to drag my steering wheel out of my cold dead hands mate. There is no way I'm trusting a computer to drive my car. As we all know, it's not if, but when the damn computer will next stuff up or freeze.

I guess automatic control of motor cars will be a good way of reducing the population. Assuming they get the same quality control in the things as in all to many cars, the carnage will be horrendous.

Add to that the rate of desk top computer freezing episodes & the reduction in population should be quite rapid.

I wonder what would happen to a car, traveling at 100Km/H when the thing froze. Do you remember the demonstration by Mercedes of their auto brake system a few years back? Was it 2 or 3 of their top of the range things that wrote each other off.

I'm not going to worry about it, I reckon my grand kids will be old & grey by the time it is sorted. We will probably have teleporting before then, although the same worry about computers would apply.

I thought this true life story may be of interest here.
We have a truely dreadful road here.
It, understanding its construction methods and its under the road ground, can not be without many millions any better.
Council and its contractors are constantly rebuilding sections.
And while those sections too fail, it is at a slower rate [some improvements in construction methods]
Drainage to be specific.
Well a recently renewed and far better part of the road, has seen a death in a run off thev road smash.
Both sides of that part are far worse!
But the smash is being put down to the road.
Thousands of such storeys exist.
But when has anyone heard of road builders or funders trying to tell the public about the reasons our roads fall apart?

I kind of feel the same about riding/driving, Hasbeen, but at my age of 50 I fully expect the human-controlled motor vehicle to be obsolete well before I turn up me toes. There's no problem with reliability of control systems and it's a trivial exercise to design in negative-feedback fail-safe modes. We already trust computers to fly our planes in the form of fly-by-wire - the pilot chooses what he'd like the plane to do and the computer decides firstly, if it can be done and second, how to make it happen. The current generation of military fast jets will also very probably be the last to carry a crew and the heavies won't be far behind.

I'd really like to believe that the coming age of automated everything will free humanity from drudgery and enable a new golden age of creative endeavour in which every whim is readily fulfilled - something like Asimov's conception of the robot as faithful, untiring, servant facilitating human expression

On the other hand, simple observation of the tyrannies inflicted by assiduous workers in industry and bureaucracy diligently applying rigid processes with little concern for the outcome or any ability to modify the process leaves little doubt in my mind as to the likely stultifying nature of a machine-controlled world. When combined with the evidence that the vast majority of people are simply not interested in being creative, nor have any creative abilities, the outlook seems poor for such a renascence.

The roadworks story also provides a lesson in a human response to a rigidly prescriptive process that is judged to be inapproriate - the speed limits are largely unenforced and observed more in the breach. It's hard to imagine a "cop-bot" doing that...

Bring on the cop-bots!

They couldn’t do a worse job than the human variety!

While it may not in truth be of interest I have an itch to tell of what it is like to work on the roads.
This is from the recent past, NSW has cut the fingers and toes off its own workers and contracted the work out.
And thanks to the odd bottle of Scotch and tickets to the game, to the wrong contractor at twice the price.
Road workers have always seen the out outstandingly good and the useless work side by side.
At every level.
But after about an hour, it takes that long, putting a traffic control plan in place.
Signage flagmen speed reduction and movement plans so every one on site knows where they MUST turn around, or enter or leave site.
A motorist will pull up and claim, spittle going every place, you have no signs up!
Public abuse is rampart even rubbish trowing and fruit juice bottle full of urine hit road workers.
Every effort to get the controlling statutory authority to spend just a bit of its extensive advertising on educating motorist is seen as wasteful.
A shame! if only sitting at their desks those not showing concern could be the target of those juice bottles!

Hi belly, sorry for the delay in replying, I wanted to give you a proper reply, because I think you deserve it for your sincere good intent. As you know I used to work on the roads myself, with over 15 years in the soil testing game. During that time I saw the cost and complexity of traffic control increase massively, with traffic control becoming a separate industry that was legally responsible independent of the group doing the work and traffic control procedures being codified and regulated as a statutory obligation. Personnel became individually licensed and individually accountable, while the chain of responsibility concept was invoked to make everyone involved in the process individually accountable for their compliance with the process. It was TQM gone mad.

The problem in that is that at each point in the development of those regulations, the person responsible for signing off was, naturally, most concerned with avoiding any possibility of having his/her part of the process being found to have been in any way to blame if any accident occurred, so they went overboard. The plans became complex nightmares and spawned an industry as the big contractors made their own risk-management decisions and opted for contracting out.

Over time the plans have become more complex and draconian and rigid as the industry seeks to reduce its exposure to risk by demanding that they only be held accountable for the way they implement the process, rather than having to make decisions that may be questioned later. They also have a financial incentive, since more complex plans cost more and if the plan is mandated, then the contractor can't argue and will simply pass the cost back to the (Government or industry) client anyway. Have a look at http://www.rta.nsw.gov.au/doingbusinesswithus/downloads/technicalmanuals/tcwsversion4/tcwsv4appendixdi2.pdf for the RTA's current manual, which is no less than 137 pages long.

A job that used to be done by a labourer with a lollipop under the direction of a supervisor has become an embodiment of bureaucratic risk aversion and the cost is enormous.

Antiseptic I too was around the roads for those 15 years and more.
The last ten became interesting.
Elected as one of but elected the senior Union Delegate to the RTA SBU
Single Bargaining Unit.
We had every form of training side by side with those who made up managements team.
We got a lot done, my award for leadership hangs on my wall.
They did not give awards for being gullible.
We put our hearts in to it,wanting to be the best alternative so we kept our jobs.
They never intended that.
Traffic control first reduced our numbers, and let graft in the door.
For 20 years NSW rail saw family's of employees win millions of dollars worth of never carried out or badly done contracts.
The RTA even had foremen contracting small fleets of 4x4 to the crews they ruled over.
One took 12 months leave, to build a bridge his brother had won the contract for, from his boss the RTA.
TRAFFIC CONTROL FIRMS very often owned by current or former engineers won work, went broke over night and started up the next day under another name.
MY MATES PAID WITH JOBS THEY HELD FOR IN SOME CASES 40 YEAR.

Antiseptic, how does the chronic maladhesion to the temporary speed limits at roadwork sit with those who want to cover their backsides against being blamed for an accident or injury?

If such an accident did occur, due to vehicles going faster than the posted temporary speed limit, with no efforts being made by the department, company, manager or relevant workers to control it, then they would surely have to be deemed complicit in the accident.

And if they are deliberately putting up legally-binding speed limits that are well under the speed that they want traffic to do, then they should be charged with the misuse of this signage and consequently with a perversion of the law.

It seems that the relevant authorities are not doing a good job at all in covering their backsides, and that they would be doing a much better job if strove to put up signage that was always appropriate for the circumstances and then made every effort to get traffic to stick to it.

The very notion that everyone wants to make sure that they don’t get sued or cop a dirty great fine or get the sack over a safety matter, sits in stark contrast to the reality of the whole management regime!

It seems to me that it is more a matter of just plain sloppiness, and an absence of any political will to bring it all into line.

Belly, I remember a bloke down at Yass (I think, might have been Gundagai) with a traffic control business who I thought was ex-RTA back in the early 90s when this whole debacle really took off. Would that be the same bloke?

Unfortunately corruption and jobs for the boys are always with us. It's much easier when the bloke signing the cheque isn't the one with the responsibility for the decision-making and the one doing the decision-making only as to show adherence to the decision-making process to absolve himself of any allegations of impropriety. What went on behind the scenes stays there as long as nobody speaks out of turn.

Qld Main Roads Construction and Maintenance went through a similar process of "commercialisation", becoming Roadtek and it seems to have been fairly successful, although they've also lost a lot of staff.

Ludwig, it doesn't have any impact on them. That's not their job and as long as they tick all the relevant boxes they're right as rain. What you are not grasping is that the only questions regarding responsibility which will be considered in any investigation is "did you follow the correct procedure set down in the rules and do you have the paperwork signed off to prove it". "Thank you sir, you're free to go."

Having investigated, a recommendation will be made that the temporary speed restriction on that site be reduced by 20km/h, thereby covering the bum of the investigator, who will blame excessive speed or driver inattention if possible. After all, a cop's job is to issue offence notices. If anyone hasn't faithfully followed the procedure or can't prove it with paperwork they may be in trouble, but otherwise it's a risk-free activity for all concerned except the road users and the guys holding the stop/slow signs, who aren't able to do anything except stay vigilant.

The cops don't want to be pulling people up in traffic control zones, because it causes a hazard. They will set up a speed camera, but that's about it.