Hearings begin for massive Valentine’s Day pile-up on PA Turnpike

Legislators began hearings this week to investigate what went wrong to cause the 100 vehicle pile-up on the Pennsylvania Turnpike on Valentine’s Day. So far it doesn’t sound like there was a Penn DoT failure. They had worked to clear snow from a storm that had dumped up to one foot of snow on the area.

The speed restrictions had been lifted at 6:00 AM, about 2 1/2 hours before the chain reaction collision happened .Testimony also showed that the road had been plowed and salted just before the massive wreck happened.

So what went wrong? One thing we do know is that many of the involved vehicles were trucks. Given their weight, stopping is much more difficult for a truck; it just takes longer. Even more than drivers of cars, truck drivers have a duty to antiicipate hazards and if they encounter hazardous conditions, they MUST use extreme caution. Amazingly, nobody was killed in this pile-up. Just think about the economic cost to the region. How many commuters were delayed? How many oother deliveries were delayed? What was the lost productivity for the whole region?