Move aside for emergency vehicles

Steer clear or be cited was the message for motorists along Route 309 in South Tamaqua on Wednesday morning.

West Penn Township Police were out in force as part of a National Highway Safety Network initiative, conducted in cooperation with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. The goal was to raise awareness of the dangers emergency personnel face as they try to provide assistance or enforce the law.

Tow truck operator Todd Deem II of Nothstein Auto Repair has firsthand experience with such dangers.

He was nearly struck by a driver who refused to move over when he was on a call last summer.

“I was on a call on the Blue Mountain, picking up a disabled vehicle from the slow northbound lane, when this lady came up and hit that vehicle. Luckily, I wasn’t injured, but she tried to say I was at fault, not her. I called the Pennsylvania State Police and they cited her under the steer clear law,” Deem says.

Now, every time he goes out to a call, his heart races and he worries if this one will be his last.

West Penn Township Police Chief Brian Johnson said the law applies to “any and every emergency vehicle, whether it’s police, fire, ambulance, tow truck or someone just stopping to help and has their four ways flashing. It also applies to road construction workers.”

The setup for Wednesday was to have three of West Penn’s police officers, Chief Johnson and patrolmen Anthony Houser and Brandon Alexander, monitoring speed along Route 309.

Two additional officers, Zach Evans and Richton Penn, served as backup.

When someone was stopped for speeding, a backup officer responded to make sure traffic moved over or slowed down. If someone didn’t follow the steer clear law, they were stopped and warned or cited.

Multiple drivers were stopped for not following the law and were handed a leaflet explaining how the law works. The leaflet also included four highway statistics taken from across the U.S.: 23 highway workers are killed every month; one law enforcement officer is killed every month; five firefighters are killed every year; and a tow-truck driver is killed every year in traffic related incidents.

The Pennsylvania Legislature made the steer clear law mandatory in 2006 and added some bite to it in 2017 by increasing the fine.

Violators face a citation resulting in a fine of up to $250. If there is an additional traffic violation, that fine can be doubled. If the violation results in a worker being injured, a driver faces a 90-day license suspension.

PennDOT statistics show there were 15 steer clear related incidents in 2017 in Pennsylvania alone, resulting in eight injuries and three deaths.

Deem is happy not to be one of those statistics. All he wants “is for drivers to slow down and move over when they see an emergency vehicle.”