Followup to last night’s meeting which was covered in detail here by WFMZ’s Randy Kraft who always does an excellent job covering LMT.
We spoke about Tractor Trailers and ice issues at length both during the public safety meeting and full board. This issue has been front and center in our area recently:
EDITORIAL: Pennsylvania needs a tougher ‘ice missile’ law
This winter has generated many similar but less serious incidents. Steven Crouse of Palmer Township avoided serious injury Dec. 16 when ice from a truck came through his windshield on Route 22. On Tuesday night, a driver reported a similar incident on Route 22 in Upper Macungie Township, resulting in minor damage to his car.
The goal is to have ice and snow scraped from the tops of tractor-trailers before they leave warehouses, because sheets of ice can fly off and slam into vehicles driving behind them, causing serious injury. Due to land use policies that have inundated our roads with tracter trailers we have to be proactive in dealing with safety issues. This is one of many.
Here is the action we took last night: We discussed briefly an ordinance but decided against it. This would be ineffective since we do not have a local police dept. to enforce local ordinances. Further no ordinance could retroactively require existing businesses to install ice scraper devices which I believe should be a goal. And lastly I prefer a strategy that doesn’t involve a regulation of an issue which really should be common sense.
So the second tact proposed was attempting to get local distribution warehouses to voluntarily install ice scrapers such as the units installed at Coca Cola facility in Fogelsville.
It was agreed unanimously to authorize staff to send a letter to all existing distribution warehouses that it is the townships formal stance that we strongly encourage distribution warehouses to voluntarily install ice scrapers and require trucks departing their facilities to utilize them.
Secondly as other warehouses (Jaindl Spring Creek) come through land development we will utilize the process to encourage new buildings to incorporate these structures into design. Unfortunately, the Jaindl MOU makes warehouses a ‘by-right’ use instead of a conditional use which would require a hearing where we could require scrapers. (yet another terrible aspect of the MOU) But still at this point we can appeal to landowners to take responsibility for their development.
The costs of these units pale in comparison to a lawsuit that would surely occur if a truck leaves these facilities and someone dies because of an ‘ice missile;. I would hope that managers at these facilities understand this really should be a no-brainer and even-though we aren’t requiring them to, that they voluntarily install ice scrapers. If they don’t and if it continues to pose a public safety issues the next step would be exploring a possible ordinance and/or supporting stricter state laws.
