No shortage of speeders — as traffic rebounds in pandemic
Back in early April, at the peak of the pandemic in Pennsylvania, travel data from state and corporate sources showed highways were emptying and drivers were speeding up. With fewer people on the road, those commuting suddenly had room to maneuver, and they were going to make the most of it.
Traffic is closer to normal now, but the Lehigh Valley’s flow isn’t quite back to regular levels. PennDOT’s most recent data from late June and early July indicates traffic on Interstate 78 is about
85% of what it had been a year earlier. But it’s close enough that I decided it was worth breaking out my speed gun to get a sense of speeding.
If you’re new to this exercise, here’s how it works. After taking reader suggestions, I head out to locations across the Valley and camp out for 15 minutes with my radar gun. I jot down every time I find someone going 11 mph or more over the posted speed limit. I use 11 mph because that’s how fast you have to be going for police to write you a speeding ticket.
I’m not writing tickets, and I’m not out there long enough to seriously deter speeding. Instead, the purpose of this investigation is to remind drivers about spots where speeding is common and get them to reflect on their own driving habits. High-speed crashes tend to be more deadly, particularly for pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcyclists. speed limit. Many of them were turning into Horwith’s, which tended to create backups as they waited for breaks in traffic. Despite their heavy presence, I didn’t record a single speeding truck on the highway between 10:09 and 10:24 a.m. Monday.
I did catch six vehicles racing through, half of them going more than 15 miles per hour faster than the posted speed limit. That’s a steep ticket if a cop were to pull them over. I’ll note all six FedEx box trucks I recorded were going 52 mph — not fast enough to get a ticket, but a quick pace to keep up with their busy schedule. crackdown. On my way out of town, I passed three cars pulled over, and one officer blared his sirens and started zooming after me.
I started sweating bullets. I did not think I had been speeding, but my face paled at the thought of getting a ticket while doing my speed gun checks. THE SHAME! I immediately pulled over.
Fortunately for me, I wasn’t speeding. The officer was after the vehicle behind me, who took quite a bit longer to pull over. onto or off of 19th Street, which I hadn’t expected.
Despite the high number of vehicles slowing down to turn, I still saw plenty of speeders. One motorcyclist turned west onto Chew Street, swerved around a parking vehicle and gunned it to 44 mph within 250 feet. I clocked another motorcycle at 52 mph, more than twice the posted speed limit. In total, there were eight vehicles exceeding the speed limit by at least 11 mph.
Based on the readers’ complaints, it sounds like the city has a lot of room for improvement when it comes to enforcing safe speeds in the area. During more normal times, the fairgrounds attract a lot of pedestrians, creating the potential for deadly results. If nothing else, the city should stick up more speed limit signs around here. I couldn’t find one on Chew Street between Ninth Street and 22nd Street, a 1½-mile stretch. lacks a shoulder, and there are few places to pull over. One reader asked me this time to head to Schantz Road, but between the stop signs at the intersection and an S-curve, I decided it wasn’t safe. I instead checked farther north at Nestle Way, which serves an industrial park.
Adams Road was the least busy road I checked, but it had nearly as many speeders as the other three combined. The speed limit here is 30 mph because of the narrow bridge over Interstate 78 and the woods encroaching south of Oldt Road. But for the half-mile in between, the road is open with clear sightlines. It’s enough to trick people into speeding.
Like Route 329, Adams Road sees heavy truck traffic, thanks to the industrial park off Nestle Way. And like on Route 329, those trucks mostly kept traffic obeying the speed limit. I caught two Godshall Landscaping trucks going over the speed limit, but the worst offenders were passenger vehicles, including one guy who floored it to 56 mph after turning north on Adams Street.
Morning Call reporter Tom Shortell can be reached at 610-820-6168 or tshortell@mcall.com.