"It is incredibly dangerous."

Those four words sum up the degree of difficulty for a highway line painting crew from Ile des Chenes. Ray Berard is Chief Executive Officer for RCB Painting, which is a pavement marking business. Berard urges motorists to be careful when passing his workers.

RCB Painting is responsible for painting lines along 5,200 kilometres of provincial highways in this part of Manitoba. This week, they have been painting lines along the Perimeter Highway.

Berard explains his trucks are only travelling 22 kilometres per hour, making the work incredibly dangerous. He says even with a pilot vehicle and large signage urging motorists to slow down, they still encounter vehicles blowing past at 100 kilometres per hour.

According to Berard, his crews have what they consider two close calls every week on average. He gives an example of one time when they were painting lines along the Trans Canada Highway near Ste. Anne.

"A semi truck passed us on the right side of the highway, created a bunch of dust and then another semi truck passed us on the left side of the highway, nearly took out our pilot truck," recalls Berard. "Everybody stopped, I think everybody quit breathing for at least a second there."

He also remembers in 2016 when a young lady drove into their pilot vehicle at 100 kilometres per hour, resulting in her vehicle rolling on the highway. Berard says thankfully nobody was hurt. Even with all these close calls, Berard says his crew has never been involved in a fatal incident.

Berard says most of their work happens during the day and they try to avoid rush hour traffic. But, in the case of the Perimeter Highway, he says painting lines at night actually makes most sense.

"The Perimeter is a really busy place and pretty much the only way for us to get the Perimeter done with the lowest traffic amount possible is late in the evening," he says. "There's less chance of people driving over wet paint."

When it comes to laws protecting line painting trucks, Berard says they fall under the same guidelines as emergency vehicles. That means, if the speed limit is 80 kilometres per hour or above, you are required to slow down to 60 when passing. And if the speed limit is below 80 kilometres per hour, you are required to slow down to 40.