In light of the recent snow storms, Pennsylvania Department of Transportation has weighed in on the effectiveness of tractor trailer bans, and they say it’s going well.
PennDOT began enforcing commercial vehicle bans in 2018, and according to PennDOT’s District 5 Press Officer, the bans have reduced the number of wrecks seen during inclement weather, particularly snow storms.
“We didn’t have any restrictions during that [snowstorm in November of 2018]. There were 97 commercial vehicle crashes statewide. Then next, there were three additional storms, January 19, 20, 2019, February 12, and March 3, 2019. All three of those storms we put in the tiered restrictions, and those three combined had fewer total commercial vehicle crashes than that one storm in November,” PennDOT District 5 press officer Ronald Young said to ABC 16 News.
Not only are the bans intended to reduce the number of weather-related crashes, but PennDOT says the reduced traffic also allows plow drivers to clear snow more quickly, and emergency vehicles to get to where they’re needed more efficiently.
“They [semi trucks] are the type of vehicles where if something happens, if they get jackknifed, stuck, into a wreck, it’s going to take a lot longer for those vehicles removed from the roadway. When time is taken to do that, the snow keeps coming down, traffic backs up, and our plow trucks can’t move, and emergency vehicles can’t get through,” Young said.
“For such a large amount of snow [recently], it went relatively well. We are happy that the majority of people heeded the warning and stayed home or stayed wherever they were.”