http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/sussex/index.ssf?/base/news-1/1179291953251190.xml&coll=1FATALITY ON ROUTE 80
Motorcyclist killed in construction zone
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
BY MIKE FRASSINELLI
Star-Ledger Staff
A motorcyclist from Pennsylvania was killed in Warren County during rush hour yesterday morning after he lost control of his bike in a Route 80 construction zone and was run over by a minivan, police said.
State Police at Hope said Steven Wallace, 55, of Tannersville in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains, was traveling east on Route 80 at mile marker 6.3 in Knowlton Township when he tried to switch from the rough left-center lane to the newly paved left lane on a four-lane stretch of the highway.
Crews are milling and smoothing out the road from just east of the Delaware Water Gap toll bridge to beyond mile marker 8, the first resurfacing of that stretch of the well-traveled interstate since 1995. Drivers traveling from one lane to the other would have to straddle about a 3-inch incline from the left-center lane to the left lane, so signs alert drivers to stay in their lanes.
"There is a big difference" in the grade between the two lanes, said investigating Trooper Louis Crisafulli, who recommends that drivers follow the signs and stay in their lanes in the construction area.
Wallace lost control just after 5:15 a.m. and was thrown from his 2004 Yamaha motorcycle into the newly milled left-center lane, where he and the bike were run over by a 2007 Chrysler Town and Country driven by 62-year-old H.A. Williams of the Bronx, N.Y., police said.
The married Wallace, among the legions of commuters from the Poconos to jobs in New York City, decided to take his cycle to work on the balmy spring day.
The accident was a rush-hour nightmare for commuters, closing all but the far left lane of travel just east of mile marker 6 -- past the trio of exits for Columbia, Buttzville and Blairstown -- for nearly three hours.
Wallace was pronounced dead at the scene by Gail Durling of the Warren County Medical Examiner's Office.
Medical Examiner Isidore Mihalakis during an autopsy yesterday afternoon determined that Wallace died from "multiple injuries."
Knowlton's first aid squad responded.
The Joseph J. Pula Funeral Home in Stroudsburg, Pa., is handling arrangements