Traffic Cone Damage

One motorist describes an incident where other motorists drove over traffic cones.  One road safety worker was dropping cones off the back of  a moving truck onto a lane that was under construction.  The problem was that he wasn’t as careful as he should have been, and one of the traffic cones landed in a lane under use.

Most oncoming traffic was able to avoid the cone, but one motorist was confused and went directly into it.  The traffic cone went under the vehicle and was dragged for a few feet.  The motorist didn’t think much of it, took the squished cone out from under the car, and kept driving.  It’s impressive that there was no damage, but this raises two questions that user “edisdead” from honestjohn.co.uk brought up.  Why were the maintenance crews being reckless, and would the traffic cones do more damage if they had heavy bases?