New Jersey crossing guards injured on the job

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New Jersey workers that perform a very public service are increasingly being injured on the job and rely on the local workers’ compensation program for public employees to cover them. School crossing guards that escort children across the street are increasingly being injured while performing their duties on the job due to careless drivers that are simply not paying attention.

Though the accident rate on our streets has been declining in recent years, such crossing guards are injured more often on the job than just a few years ago. “The school crossing guard has become the most dangerous job in municipal government,” said the executive director of the Municipal Excess Liability and Joint Insurance Fund of New Jersey.

All anyone needs to do is observe traffic patterns to understand why the rate of injuries for these workers is going up. Beyond aggressive or distracted driving, sun glare darkness when students are coming to or going from the school, and students themselves taking risks when crossing the road also puts such crossing guards at additional risk of injury.

What is less understood is that workers’ compensation for these injured crossing guards may be all that keeps them financially above water. Filling out a successful workers’ compensation application requires thoroughness and accuracy, but attorneys experienced in the workers’ compensation field can assist injured parties in filling the paperwork out.

Without workers’ compensation coverage, injured public workers would face insurmountable costs due to medical expenses, wage losses and the need for personal services that the worker cannot provide for himself while injured. Yet such compensation is the least that we can provide for public employees facing injuries due to foreseeable and unforeseeable risks of doing their job – lowing paying jobs by the way that people take on out of concerns for our children.

Source: NorthJersey.com, “Keeping kids safe poses growing risk for crossing guards,” by Deena Yellin, Feb. 26, 2012