MONROE COUNTY, Pa. — Roads and interstates are clear again after a multi-day snowstorm buried many parts of Pennsylvania earlier this week, including in Monroe County.
"For such a large amount of snow, it went relatively well. We are happy that the majority of people heeded the warning and stayed home or stayed wherever they were," said Ronald Young, PennDOT District 5 press officer.
That includes commercial vehicles like tractor-trailers.
During major snowstorms, PennDOT places a ban on big rigs on interstates and major roads to prevent any issues and to allow for plow truck drivers to clear the way.
"They 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," said Young.
Young says PennDOT started enforcing bans after a snowstorm in November of 2018.
"We didn't have any restrictions during that storm. 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," said Young.
Young tells Newswatch 16, a lot of planning and preparation goes into banning commercial vehicles from interstates during a storm, and more recently, drivers in the industry have been complying.
It gives PennDOT drivers the time and space to get the roads clear.