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Pennsylvania House of Representatives
https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/Legis/CSM/showMemoPublic.cfm?chamber=H&SPick=20150&cosponId=18134
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House of Representatives
Session of 2015 - 2016 Regular Session

MEMORANDUM

Posted: April 21, 2015 03:13 PM
From: Representative Brad Roae
To: All House members
Subject: Removing Mandates on Shadow Vehicles
 
In the near future, I will introduce legislation to help townships, boroughs and cities better utilize their limited road budgets.

About 1 out of every 40,000 accidents in PA is caused by a vehicle hitting a municipal vehicle that is mowing, cleaning ditches or patching potholes. Although all accidents are unfortunate, these types of accidents are literally some of the least common types of accidents that occur. Accidents caused by drunk driving, distracted driving, speeding, etc. contribute to a far greater number of accidents. There are about 125,000 accidents a year in Pennsylvania and 2 or 3 per year are caused by municipal equipment doing maintenance work. According to PennDOT, there were 11 such vehicle accidents in the past 5 years compared to a total of nearly 600,000 vehicle accidents in that same five year period.

PennDOT recently made a policy decision to accept word for word the new federal guidelines for shadow vehicles. States are not required to adopt the guidelines. The guidelines mandate that a shadow vehicle be used anytime a municipal vehicle is performing any type of work such as mowing, ditch cleaning or pothole patching. A shadow vehicle drives behind the vehicle performing the work to warn motorists that a slow moving vehicle is ahead. It is mandated even on rural dirt roads that only have a couple dozen vehicles a day using the road. I-95 near Philadelphia as well as a rural township dirt road like Plank Road in East Mead Township in Crawford County both now require that a shadow vehicle be used.

Several townships and boroughs in my district only have two employees. A mandated shadow vehicle doubles the man hours needed to perform jobs that one person could do. It also doubles the fuel that is used for the extra vehicle. It requires that 100% of the work crew be used on what previously used 50% of the work crew.

My legislation would make the shadow vehicle mandate only apply to state roads. Township, borough, and city roads would be exempt from this mandate.

The money used for shadow vehicles on low traffic volume local roads may be better spent on installing “Stop Ahead” sings, increased DUI patrols, line painting, etc. Local municipalities could prevent more accidents doing these types of things rather than spending the money on shadow vehicles. If shadow vehicles eliminated 100% of the accidents caused by that type of accident, Pennsylvania would have 124,997 accidents a year rather than the 125,000 we have now. This legislation would allow local government to use limited resources in better ways to make roads safer.

I would greatly appreciate your support of this legislation. Thank you for your consideration.



Introduced as HB1194