The U.S. Interstate Highway System began taking shape in the 1920s. However, all those projects were put on hold in 1929 when the Great Depression hit, and remained so for decades. In 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act in response to the explosion of automobiles taking to the roads during the post-war boom, with a plan to build 41,000 miles of highways that ran from sea to shining sea.
In 1954, 58 million registered motor vehicles were on the road in the U.S. Today, there are over 284 million, and it can sometimes feel like we’re all driving around on those same century-old roads. Enter the infamous work zone, where workers don’t necessarily need to be present for you to get a speeding ticket if you’re caught on camera by an Automated Speed Enforcement (ASE) system. As with standard work zones, state laws vary, so always check local regulations.
For instance, New York state statute 1180-E requires workers to be present, and clear signage leading up to the work zone warning that a photo-monitoring system is being used. Caution is advised in NY as State Police are known to wear hard hats and reflective vests to blend in with road construction crews. Much like New York, the state of Washington also requires signage, and enforcement only happens while workers are present in the zone. In Maryland, however, workers don’t need to be present for a traffic camera to issue a ticket. Florida has stringent work zone laws, but by and large doesn’t currently use ASEs in work zones. However, state law allows them to be at intersections and designated school zones (which are common).
Work zone speeding fines can add up
F Armstrong Photography/Shutterstock
In California, Assembly Bill 289 went into effect in January of 2026. However, it only applies if the appropriate signage stating that it’s “photo enforced” is present and must be located no more than 500 feet ahead of where the system is placed. Furthermore, citations can only be issued when construction workers are present.
Fines associated with these relatively new ASE laws can vary widely depending on the scenario. Going 11 to 15 mph over the posted speed limit in California carries a $50 fine (like in New York) and can escalate to $500 for speeds of 100 mph or greater. In New York, though, a second violation is $75 (if it occurred within 18 months of the first), while subsequent violations are $100 (again, if within 18 months of the first). In Maryland, the current tiered schedule starts at $60 for going 12 to 15 mph over the posted limit and goes up to $500 for driving 40 mph or more over the posted limit; those fines double if workers are present. Beginning on July 1, 2026, Washington drivers can expect a first-time infraction to cost $125, with subsequent infractions increasing to $248. On May 1, the state began requiring initial driver’s license applicants under 25 to pass an online work zone and first responder safety course before receiving their license.
More and more, states are using ASE systems to keep everyone safe because work zones are inherently dangerous due to uneven pavement, narrower lanes, concrete barriers, and strange orange lines on the road. Ultimately, it’s better to be safe than sorry. Stick to the letter of the law when traveling through them because, in the grand scheme of things, it’s a momentary annoyance that’s not worth a lifetime of regret.
Staff who use AI can end up with more to do, not less.
Think carefully about the tools you’re using and why.
Adopt a set of standards and refine your outputs.
The promise of productivity boosts from AI can come with an unwelcome side order of stress. Harvard Business Review found that AI doesn’t reduce work; it intensifies it, leading to cognitive fatigue and unsustainable hours.
While the common perception is that AI can help reduce workloads, allowing employees to focus more on higher-value and more engaging tasks, HBR’s research found that staff using AI worked more quickly and often ended up with more to do, not less.
Ankur Anand, group CIO at tech recruiter Harvey Nash, said professionals who want to avoid cognitive fatigue must understand how to use AI effectively and its potential risks.
“That focus will help to reduce the noise around the workload that AI creates,” he told ZDNET, suggesting that many people have unrealistic expectations about the productivity boost that AI will provide.
“Many organizations are telling their people, ‘We want to understand how you’re making an impact with AI,'” he said. “But these professionals are not empowered, which means that using AI adds a lot of pressure, because they need to prove themselves on their own terms.”
If you’re going to make the most of AI at work, then you’re going to have to find an effective balance between completing tasks quickly and producing high-quality work.
Here’s how the experts believe professionals can ensure they reap the benefits, not the problems, of AI — and they suggest that you’ll need to focus on three core areas: tools, guidelines, and outputs.
Limit your toolset
Alex Read, senior enterprise product manager for data at energy provider EDF UK, told ZDNET that the best way for professionals to reap the benefits, not the challenges, of AI is to be uber-focused on tools that help you produce value in your roles.
While there are thousands of potential AI-enabled services on the market, Read said sensible professionals limit their horizons.
In his own role, for example, Read focuses on how AI can help him build a data platform and update information accurately, efficiently, and productively: “Anything outside of that scope is noise for me.”
That sentiment resonated with Nick Pearson, CIO at technology specialist Ricoh Europe, who told ZDNET it’s important to take a step back and think carefully about how an AI tool can help you produce value in your role.
“If you think about the phrase ‘gen AI,’ the tech is very good, by definition, at generating outputs,” he said. “I could go to bed in the evening, set the model to work, and we could have four new IT strategies produced overnight.”
However, quantity doesn’t necessarily mean quality. Pearson suggested it’s important to focus on AI’s blind spots, particularly as most models are trained on preexisting content.
“AI can’t inspire people, per se; it can’t naturally create something new, because it’s actually quite recursive,” he said.
“And the judgment you have to put in sometimes, on top of everything else, whether it be an ethical or a capability judgment, is not there automatically in the technology.”
It’s in this gap, said Pearson, that human experts play a critical role: “We’re toying with that concern as an organization and saying, ‘Where does AI really play an important role, versus where are we upskilling people in areas that AI probably won’t play for a long time?'”
To correct this issue, HBR said companies need to adopt an “AI practice,” or a set of norms and standards around AI use that help professionals ensure they use AI in a constrained but productive manner.
At EDF UK, Read is part of an internal AI Center of Excellence in enterprise IT, which enables policy for the effective use of AI across the wider organization.
In addition to Read, who contributes input from a data-use perspective, the group includes other tech representatives, such as the firm’s senior manager of AI, principal software engineer, and principal solution architect.
“The remit of this center is to make sure that, when the federated business units are looking to build, develop, and deploy AI services, they have platforms, guidance, best practices, architectural assets, and materials to guide them on how to safely and efficiently adopt AI and operationalize it at scale,” he said.
Some of the key themes the center considers when assessing AI tools are scalability and reusability, ensuring a proposed service doesn’t replicate one already in use.
“All new tools and services related to AI will go through that hopper and funnel to understand scope and ensure the security, regulatory, and ethical side of things are understood,” he said, suggesting that all professionals should use their organization’s pre-existing guidelines to foster an appropriate exploitation of emerging tech.
“The benefit that guided approach brings is that it allows us to be clear in our messaging around what AI services can be used, how they’re used from a use-case perspective, and ultimately, what personas are allowed to use them.”
Louise Newbury-Smith, head of UK&I at technology specialist Zoom, told ZDNET that one way to ensure your outputs are constrained is to focus on prompting.
“Use simple amendments to be specific, such as ‘Give me the top three things with the biggest impact.’ That approach should guide your prompt, rather than saying, ‘Give me everything you know about this topic.'”
Newbury-Smith said the successful use of AI is all about being smart about how it’s exploited, and that effectiveness comes down to enablement and engagement. If a prompt yields too much information, refine it until you get what you need. She said this should still be faster than trying to get answers without AI.
The basic message for professionals is that effective applications of AI are all about you staying in the loop, said Bernhard Seiser, vice president of digital, data, and IT at AOP Health.
Think before you use AI, and think again before you push your outputs around the organization.
“It doesn’t help the business if you get AI-generated emails that are many pages long, and then you need ChatGPT to summarize the text,” he told ZDNET.
Seiser said that while there are certain tasks generative AI is good at and worth using for, in the end, “you need to use your brain.”
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