For construction on the major highways, California often has a Highway
Patrol car sitting there the entire time, perhaps as a "This means you"
footnote to all the construction-ahead signs and lane-closure
indications.

Quite often, when possible, a big orange highway department truck or
two -- sometimes with a sort of hydraulic lift appendage on back filled
with "attenuators" -- is also interposed between the idiots and the
highway workers.

Maybe the penalty for the sort of thing the original poster witnessed
should be making the offending drivers sit in their cars in a
construction zone all day wearing orange cones on their heads like
dunce caps.

--Joe