Lancaster County Road hazards

Riding a scooter around this county has taught me a new respect for road conditions, road quality, and road debris. Here are my "Top Ten" road hazards for Lancaster County.

# 10.) Odds and ends: Common to all roads, but an issue here in south central PA, any number of things could litter the road surface. Just today, I had to dodge some carpet ends that had apparently fallen off a truck. Other things, from mufflers, to "road alligator," to cardboard boxes, have periodically found themselves in the road ahead of me.

# 9.) Potholes: Of course, these are a problem all over the world, but they seem to be a little worse around here. Part of the reason for this has to do with the paving techniques that are used in this area; the primary technique being tar and gravel. This technique consists of spraying tar on the existing road surface, then covering it with gravel, after which the vehicles that use the road do the job that a roller would do, albeit much more slowly.

# 8.) Road construction: Pennsylvania seems to be in a constant state of road construction. The road crews aren't always terribly observant though they seem to notice me on my scooter and are generally friendly to me. The re-direction of traffic tends to be poor and should cause operators of two and three wheeled vehicles to remain alert.

# 7.) Gravel: and lots of it, due to the aforementioned paving technique (under #9). Nothing is more terrifying to me than a freshly tarred and graveled road since the gravel is still very loose. Even after these roads have been traveled for a while, loose gravel can still abound along the edges, making these roads something I avoid whenever possible.

# 6.) Bicyclists: For some reason, there are usually hordes of these folk wandering around the back roads of the county. I don't begrudge them the use of the roads, but I do wish they'd share them better. I was riding this morning and came upon four cyclists near Farmersville, riding abreast of each other, stretched across the lane. Even though they obviously heard me coming (evidenced by turning of their heads to look at me), they did not move to the side or make way immediately as it would have made sense to do. It's this sense of entitlement that bothers me. This also extends to the many Menonites on bicycles, especially on Sunday mornings. They seem even more oblivious to motorized traffic than their less devout kindred in bicycle shorts.

# 5.) Amish buggies: The Amish aren't very safety conscious as a whole. I'm not sure if it's due to agressive inbreeding or just a general lack of common sense, but the Amish do not take much care for safety when driving their horse-drawn buggies. they will often swerve all over their lane, pull out too far at intersections, pull out in front of other vehicles, and so on. I generally have plenty of room to pass them, but many times, their erratic movements force me much closer to the center line than I care to venture.

# 4.) Amish buggy ruts: These are not actually the doing of the buggies themselves, but rather, the hooves of the horses pound out a trough in the pavement along the right edge of the lane. These should be avoided since they tend to develop potholes rather abundantly.

# 3.) Roadkill: Nothing says "countersteer!" quite like the corpse of a possum or skunk appearing suddenly in one's path. I can only imagine what would happen were I to hit one. While roadkill is a common issue all over the world, similar to potholes, there seem to be more little animal bodies riddling our roadways in PA, than anywhere else I have been. This would seem to be supported by statistics that show Pennsylvania to have the most deer fatalities on roadways of any state in the nation. It seems logical that this might carry over to other wildlife as well.

#2.) Poorly repaired roads (or old repairs gone sour): In this area, PennDOT seems fond of simply patching endless stretches of old concrete slab with tar (and sometimes tar and gravel as mentioned under #'s 9 and 7. The stretch of rt 23 between Eden and Leola seems to be especially riddled with these patches. Over time, as traffic passes over the roadway, the patches buckle and, in some places, form a hump in the middle of the road. The first time I hit one of these was with my 50cc Yamaha Vino. I was following the suggestion of the PA Motorcycle manual, which states that one should keep to the center of the lane. After being literally launched into the air by one of these humps (but with no damage to my scooter, thankfully), I chose to stick to either the left or right side of the lane and ignore the recomendations of PennDOT.

#1.) Amish Buggy exhaust: Otherwise known as "horse apples," this stuff can be pretty treacherous. It only took one run through a pile of equine excrement, after a rainstorm, for me to realize how slippery it can make the road surface.