Increasing levels of road rage over potholes and the state of UK highways has led an infrastructure company to issue its staff with body-worn cameras. On average, road workers across the sector working for Balfour Beatty have complained about 600 incidents each week, which can range from verbal abuse or being threatened with a baseball bat. Staff have been assaulted, confronted with a knife, and on one occasion, had a firecracker thrown at them from a moving vehicle. The company, which is contracted to several councils across the country for road repairs, has now developed an app to map and establish the abuse hotspots, and increased CCTV use in those areas. Staff have also been offered conflict resolution training, which includes a five-hour course to understand how to reduce risks with aggressive members of the public. Road workers have been abused over potholes and highway repairs (Balfour Beatty)This includes telling staff to “avoid matching the energy” of the abusive individual and that “tactical withdrawal is not failure, it’s smart”. On other occasions, road workers have had their picture taken to be shamed online, or have received abuse while taking St George flags down from lamposts. One participant said: “While marking up and raising pothole jobs on the A264 Colestock Road, a vehicle passed by and the passenger of the vehicle shouted some expletives and let fly a can of soft drink (thankfully empty), which landed close by.”Ben Francis, an operations manager based in East Sussex, told The Times: “In recent years it has got worse. There has been a huge spike in these incidents across the country.“We had a driver decide to go through a road closure the other day and they mounted onto the footpath and drove at teams that were actually working. After they were stopped and asked to leave they started racially abusing one of our operatives. That’s with the police now.”Despite reporting incidents to the police, the company said they had only secured one prosecution. In recent years, motorists have become increasingly frustrated with the state of disrepair across UK roads, with recent data showing that local authorities face a £18.62 billion backlog of carriageway repairs.Matt Herbert, a health and safety professional at Balfour Beatty, said: “What we need the members of the public to fully understand is that these people are there to make their journey better and not there to take abuse. We need a culture change.”