Over the past two years there has been an increasing number of accidents involving southbound vehicles on Route 308 due to a polished/defective road surface. In front of my home in northern Center Township, my wife and I counted 16 accidents within one year. We spoke about our concerns with the state troopers who responded to a couple of the accidents. They referred us to PennDOT. After several phone calls to them, my wife finally spoke to a work crew in the area, who came out, looked at the road and agreed that there was a problem with the surface. Within a week, they applied tar and chips to the southbound lanes, and the wrecks stopped.

The surface is again polished, and there have been numerous wrecks on this stretch of road — the latest, the fatality of a young woman.

Why does it take something like this to happen for our state to correct an obvious problem? Maybe some of the impact money the state collects from Marcellus shale gas producers should go to repairing the roads destroyed by heavy trucks.