Robert Stanger

Our polite neighbor on the river, Arlene, advised my wife and me one day last summer to “look out for the ‘crazies,’ there’s a lot of them” as we were about to drive back to our home in Boardman.

Although Arlene and her husband, Ron, now live in California, they are from the Pittsburgh area and still drive down there to visit relatives. This means that they must cope with deviant Western Pennsylvania drivers.

I had met up with a few of them in the months before Arlene’s remarks.

One day, when I was driving up to the river along Route 8 south of Franklin, a car passed me on the slope leading down a deep creek valley as though I were stationary (although I must have been doing 60 at least).

The lone driver then passed a truck ahead on the right side, and then swerved back to the left to avoid road maintenance workers in the right lane. Luckily, he had time to avoid an accident since at his speed, an accident would have been a terrible one.

In another instance, a young driver in a Toyota Prius came up behind me on the entrance ramp to I-80 on Route 19 below Franklin. Perhaps to impress the girl seated next to him, he passed me to the right on the grassy berm at high speed before merging with the traffic on the Interstate.

At the intersection of Routes 417 and 8 south of Titusville, a motorcyclist traveling south on Route 8 recently passed us at very high seed. That evening, TV news in Youngstown reported that a motorcyclist had been killed on Route 8 in that area. A photo showed a wrecked black motorcycle that looked like the one we had seen.

In a disturbing incident a year or so ago, a flat bed semi rig carrying a large ingot began tailgating me on Route 417 north of Franklin even though I was moving at the speed limit for that area.

Along a short stretch of open road, the driver passed me with his horn blaring despite there being scant room for him to have avoided oncoming traffic, had there been any.

I tried to get the truck’s license plate number when I encountered it later in Franklin, but failed to do so.

Due to the heavy truck traffic, we only use I-80 for the 20 miles (Hubbard to I-79, or the reverse) in our trips to and from our river cabin.

(One only has to witness how trucks vastly outnumber autos on I-80 by viewing stalled traffic across the median strip if one is traveling the opposite direction as the tie up. Those interruptions, often caused by accidents, can last for hours.)

There have been serious accidents on I-80 between Youngstown and the Route 8 intersection at Barkeyville, and on two occasions I have had to dodge large portions of blown-out truck tires lying on the highway.

One of the most tragic I-80 accidents occurred the evening of February 10 last year when two teenage girls were killed in a collision with a tractor trailer near the Mercer entrance to the highway.

The Hickory High School girls, along with two other girls in their vehicle who escaped serious injury, were on their way to a religious event for youths at Grove City College.

The Mercer County coroner, John Libonati, said that driving conditions on the highway at the time of the accident were “horrendous.”

In assessing the dangers of driving on the roads of Western Pennsylvania, there is always the deer factor to consider.

I don’t drive much at night, but I did drive from Titusville to Tidioute late one recent evening.

I knew that there were plenty of deer in the area and was therefore not traveling very fast.

This was wise, since I met up with a small herd of deer near a large pasture where they could graze. They were quite passive, and just ambled or stood along the edge of the road. However, a speeding driver could have struck several.

I am fortunate to have driven for over 70 years on highways and byways throughout the U.S. (as well as in Sweden … very briefly … and in Japan, where they drive on the left) and to have been involved in just two accidents, both minor.

When I was just 16, I hit another driver just a block from my home in Erie as I gawked at other teens on a nearby corner. And a driver coming out of a side road in Phoenix hit the left rear of my car. I needed the money, so I collected the insurance and drove the damaged car for months until I sold it.

The hazardous driving season on I-80 got an early start on Tuesday, Nov. 12, when a cold front sweeping over Lake Erie resulted in white-out conditions along the Interstate and caused multiple vehicle crashes.

Traffic was blocked in Mercer and Austintown. A Youngtown man was killed in Austintown and another victim of the crashes there was critically injured.

The Austintown fire chief said that conditions were so bad that emergency vehicles couldn’t get through in either direction. Over 50 vehicles were involved, of which 60 to 70 percent were commercial ones. The wreckage was not cleared until 2 a.m. on Wednesday after the crashes started in the late morning the previous day.

Crashes that occurred around mid-day on Tuesday on I-80 near Mercer involved a number of tractor trailers as well as passenger vehicles. Injuries were reported in the crashes and the west-bound lanes were blocked for some time.

Robert Stanger has lived seasonally for over 40 years along the Allegheny River and has the stories to tell about it.