You see it on sidewalks and roads. Footprints, handprints, people writing their names and other marks that show people either intentionally or unintentionally made their way through concrete that hasn’t set. While most concrete sites are blocked off, some only use safety tape or cones, which are easy to miss or barrel right through. Every occasionally an oddball story comes out about concrete mishaps, here’s one such story.

A woman recently drove through a construction site before the concrete set. She made her own detour through the site and city officials only charged her with a basic citation, when she could’ve been charged with a felony by the state. She didn’t even end up paying for it, because her insurance company fronted the costs. Unfortunately, since she didn’t pay attention – or care much – about the road work, official detours, it shows that others may get away with the same thing in other cities across the country.

Roadwork signs are meant to warn drivers, pedestrians and everyone sharing the road that they may need to slow down, detour or stop all together. Road construction is frustrating, time consuming and can make anyone late to just about everything when they need to be on time for something important. However, those signs are meant to protect drivers and construction workers alike, along with keeping things like concrete from being ruined, asphalt from being destroyed and tax payer dollars from going to waste.

If you’re driving, you need to be aware of the changing conditions of construction and roadwork. Signs, bulletin boards and other indicators will give you clues as to what’s going on, where detours go and what you may need to avoid. By ignoring these clues, you risk danger to yourself and to others, along with costing your city thousands of dollars in damages and construction costs.

When you share the road with everyone else, that means you share with construction, too. Not everyone is as lucky as the woman who’s insurance company paid out her citation and fines. Avoid making the same mistake and pay attention to the roadwork and indicators the next time you’re driving through road construction.