Allentown Road Accidents Fault of Distracted Drivers, Not Speed Limit, Alignment or Engineering, Police Say

Tony Di Domizio•

An image of a two-vehicle crash that occurred at the intersection of Allentown and Forty Foot roads in Towamencin Township on June 18, 2019.

The problem with the accidents on Allentown Road between Forty Foot and Wambold roads in Towamencin, according to police, is not the alignment, signage, speed limit, or traffic volume – it is the inattentive drivers to blame.

Nothing more, nothing less.

“It’s not the roadway, it’s not the way it’s lined, it’s not the layout of it, it’s not the engineering of it, it’s not the traffic volume on it, it’s not the trucks, it’s not the speed limit – it’s the people that are on it,” Towamencin Township Police Chief Tim Troxel told supervisors at their Dec. 8 meeting.

Troxel updated supervisors, at their request, on traffic accident figures for the stretch of Allentown Road from Forty Foot to Wambold roads, with special attention to the curve at Tennis-Lukens Cemetery. Troxel gathered crash data for the past three years, from Jan. 1, 2019 to Dec. 7, 2021; the data would later be critiqued during public comment by resident James Collins, who noted the data was gathered during the pandemic, when traffic volumes were fewer.

“I was able to put some numbers together for you. Hopefully, it will allay some fears with these crashes. I know there’s been a little bit of an outcry on social media. [This section is] where we’ve had a couple of recent high-profile crashes, as far as social media and the news outlets are concerned,” Troxel said.

“I’m not a traffic engineer myself on how these numbers fall. Statistically speaking, I’m not seeing any anomalies in these numbers that play out to us having a crash problem per se on that stretch of Allentown Road,” he said.

Prior to the presentation, Supervisors Chairman Chuck Wilson said there was a concern in the community over the recent rash of accidents on the section of Allentown Road, and asked Troxel for an update “so if we need to have discussions with the police department or traffic engineer, we would be able to move forward with that.”

Troxel said police can never control the one person that is always going to be doing 80 mph no matter the speed limit.

“There’s things like that that we can’t control for. I know the outcry in the community is that this road needs to be looked at, there’s problems with the roadway, there’s problems with the way it’s lined, there’s problems with the volume of traffic, there’s problems with the speed limit,” Troxel said.

“I can tell you from the numbers I was able to look at from the past three years in doing this analysis, that the problem on Allentown Road isn’t the road, it’s the drivers that are on it,” he said.

Troxel said there have been 85 crashes since 2019, which equates to 2.3 crashes per month.

“That doesn’t seem like a crash problem, per se, to me,” he said.

Of those 85 crashes, 26 were at the Forty Foot Road intersection, 12 were at Thorndale Drive, 11 were at Reinert Road, 17 were at the Derstine Road/Fretz Road intersection, and 19 were mid-block, which is occurring somewhere else along the roadway and not at an intersection.

“Out of those 85 crashes,” Troxel said, “there were only injuries reported in nine of them in the past three years. Most of those crashes were what we call ‘non-reportable crashes.’”

PennDOT and the police classify accidents as either reportable crashes or non-reportable crashes, he said. It comes down to the seriousness of the crash. For a crash to be considered reportable, which police are required by law to forward to PennDOT, one of two criteria must be met: either someone must be injured, or a vehicle involved in the crash was disabled and could not be driven from the scene.

“There were only 38 reportable crashes over that three-year period. 47 were non-reportable, which means someone wasn’t injured or a vehicle wasn’t damaged badly enough that required towing,” Troxel said. “So, there is a much higher percent of minor accidents than major accidents. 77 of those 85 crashes didn’t have any injuries reported.”

Troxel said there was only one fatality, and it occurred this year with a pedestrian at Allentown and Forty Foot roads.

“That had a lot of media coverage. We already discussed that. I don’t want to rehash that issue,” he said.

Supervisor Laura Smith quickly corrected Troxel that it is now two fatalities, referencing the November crash that later claimed the life of Chick-fil-a Lansdale Director of IT Shayna Bergey. Troxel said police believe Bergey suffered a diabetic episode while driving.

“Two of the nine crashes that involved injuries were precipitated by medical events, one of them, unfortunately, being this crash where we ended up having a fatality,” Troxel said. “We believe there was a diabetic issue that went on prior to that crash happening, which resulted in the driver either losing consciousness or their ability to operate the vehicle, which is what caused the vehicle to drift over the center line and create a head-on crash.”

Troxel said the second medical event involved a driver suffering a seizure while driving and crashing at Forty Foot Road.

“Luckily, that person survived,” Troxel said.

In continuing his report, Troxel said there were four DUI-related crashes since 2019, with two happening each in 2019 and 2021. Average crashes are hovering around two per month, he said, with 2.9 per month occurring in 2019, 1.7 per month in 2020 and 2.4 per month in 2021 so far.

“Three of the crashes involved deers (sic) being struck. So, when you start shaving off some of those numbers and start talking about whether or not this is just about people driving like maniacs, and people driving too fast, and all the things people insinuate in public when these crashes come up, it’s actually not what we’re seeing,” Troxel said.

Of the 47 non-reportable crashes, at least 38 were attributed to inattentiveness or distracted driving, he said. He said six to eight of those 38 crashes were caused by someone sitting behind someone else in traffic and rear-ending them because they thought the driver was going. Other crashes, he said, were caused by drivers backing up into cars, drivers sideswiping vehicles because they were looking at GPS, and drivers not looking at the road.

“People are out there, being impatient, not paying attention to what they’re doing. You are behind the wheel of a 3,000 to 5,000-pound deadly machine when you’re driving a car,” Troxel said. “It’s the most dangerous thing we do every day, yet it seems to be the thing we pay the least attention to.”

Troxel said the township has just had “a run of bad luck” with the recent accidents on Allentown Road.

“It tends to get people’s ire up a bit, and they tend to blame it on something tangible,” Troxel said. “My research over the past three years is it’s people behind the cars.”

Resident James Collins said Troxel needs to take into consideration that there was reduced traffic on roadways over the past three years, due to the pandemic.

“Being here as long as I’ve been here, I’ve noticed a significant increase in traffic. We’ve had two really bad reportable accidents in the last two months (at Weikel and Allentown roads). There has been a lot more activity and a lot more accidents,” Collins said.

Troxel said there has been an uptick in traffic, but the unfortunate circumstance is we cannot keep the small town feel that so many cherish in Towamencin. Troxel said the Philadelphia metroplex area and suburban sprawl has influenced traffic in the township.

“These roadways were done to handle traffic 50 years ago,” he said. “Allentown is a two-lane state road with heavy traffic volume. The volume compared to accidents – I’m surprised it’s quite low.”

Supervisor Rich Marino let the public know the township was proactive over the Allentown Road situation, especially at the curve, three years ago.

“We did get with PennDOT on this,” Marino said.

PennDOT, he said, objected to the township’s proposal to make the approach to Thorndale right turn only because it meant the right turn only would need to carry across Forty Foot Road.

“So, instead of two lanes crossing Forty Foot, the right lane then becomes a right only lane … only one lane, and traffic would queue back to the Walton Farm school zone,” Marino said. “They had their reasons. They didn’t want to back traffic up to a school zone … It was a bad solution to a non-problem.”

Marino said supervisors are cognizant of that fact that Allentown Road is not great, and if people drive safer, a lot of this stuff will go away.

“Our options are limited because it’s a state highway. There’s not much ground to do much with,” he said.