Philadelphia will be spending $20,000 during the next 18 months to crack down on unsafe truckers on I-95 and the Schuylkill Expressway.

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation is providing the funds, which will be used to bring police on the 8 a.m.-4 p.m. shift in earlier and have them stay later on overtime to crack down on truckers.
"It's very important. It isn't just the seriousness of the accidents with tractor-trailers," said Police Commissioner John Timoney. "It's the sheer inconvenience to commuters. It's insane. We've shut down one highway for about 16 hours once."
While officials from the Philadelphia Police Department, Pennsylvania State Police and PennDOT held a press conference Wednesday to announce the additional funding, a truck crackdown was taking place nearby. Between 8 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., approximately 18 tractor-trailers were pulled into the parking lot. Inspectors put eight vehicles and three drivers out of service and wrote 48 tickets.
Timoney admits that writing more tickets isn't enough. The state needs to come up with more money for signs warning truckers of hazardous stretches of highway, such as the yellow "rollover" signs on the Schuylkill Expressway and Vare Avenue intersection and on the northbound I-95 Woodhaven Road off-ramp.
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