10 Things Pennsylvania Drivers Do That Confuse Everyone Else on the Road

The light at Forbes and Murray in Pittsburgh turns green, and the first car to move is turning left across oncoming traffic.

Nobody honks.

The driver with Maryland plates two cars back has no idea what they just watched.

These are the things Pennsylvania drivers do that confuse everyone else on the road.

1. Braking for the Tunnel

Pennsylvania drivers slow down at tunnel entrances, on open highways, in light traffic, and for no reason a visitor can see.

The Squirrel Hill Tunnel in Pittsburgh is the case with its own news coverage.

Around 106,000 vehicles pass through it on I-376 every day, and the brake lights start well before the portal without a crash or a closed lane in sight.

The Post-Gazette once called the slowdown the city’s favorite enigma and asked engineers to explain it.

Their best theory: Drivers read the tunnel walls as narrowing lanes and tap the brakes, and a thousand small taps add up to a two-mile crawl.

Locals budget time for it.

A driver from flatter country sees an open road and a hole in a hill, then slows down anyway because everyone in front of them already did.

2. Pulling the Pittsburgh Left

The Pittsburgh Left has its own name, decades of news coverage, and one simple rule: When the light turns green, oncoming drivers wave the first left-turning car through before anyone else moves.

It’s a courtesy.

The custom grew out of steep, narrow streets that never got left-turn lanes, so drivers worked out a fix among themselves.

Officially, the state driver’s manual counts failing to yield on a turn as a violation, so the beloved move is illegal.

Nobody in Bloomfield seems to mind.

A flash of headlights, a quick wave, and the turning car is gone before the visitor behind them has lifted their foot off the brake.

3. Respecting the Parking Chair

After a snowstorm, drivers across Pittsburgh mark the parking spot they shoveled with a folding chair, and the whole block honors it.

Tables work too.

When a record snowfall buried the city in January, Mayor Corey O’Connor asked residents to respect the chair, and the local CBS station found streets lined with lawn chairs, cones, and at least one full kitchen table.

The rule is unwritten and unofficial, and the neighbors who remember exactly who shoveled what enforce it.

Move a chair and take the parking spot, and the neighborhood will explain the custom to you.

Once is enough.

4. Picking Sheetz or Wawa

Pennsylvanians don’t pull into whichever gas station is closest.

They drive past two rivals to reach the brand they grew up on.

Sheetz rules the western half of the state from its home base in Altoona, and Wawa owns the Philadelphia corner.

Wawa runs more than 1,100 stores across 13 states, Sheetz tops 800, and the rivalry between them has a documentary in the works.

The border is real.

Ask a room of Pennsylvanians which chain builds a better sandwich, and half the room stops speaking to the other half.

A traveler passing through sees two gas stations.

A Pennsylvanian sees a side to defend.

5. Swerving Around Potholes

Watch the car ahead of you drift left, ease back, then hug the shoulder for ten yards, all on pavement that looks fine.

That driver is dodging potholes from memory.

The transplant behind them checks the road, sees nothing, and wonders what everybody keeps swerving around.

Winters of freeze and thaw crack the roads every spring, and PennDOT sends patch crews across dozens of highways to keep up.

The state posts a hotline for reporting craters, 1-800-FIX-ROAD, and drivers use it.

That’s a real phone number.

Regulars on Route 22 or the Schuylkill Expressway know which stretch will bend a rim, and they move over half a lane early.

6. Merging a Mile Early

At the first orange sign warning of a lane closure, drivers across the state merge immediately and treat the open lane as off-limits.

PennDOT wishes they wouldn't.

The agency promotes the zipper merge, where both lanes fill to the merge point and take turns, and one of its traffic engineers went on the news to say the early merge just fosters aggressive driving.

A state trooper quoted in the same report put the fine for blocking traffic at $130 plus costs.

Few listen.

A visitor glides down the empty lane to the cones, merges where the arrow points, and collects a windshield full of glares for following instructions.

7. Settling Into the Left Lane

The left lane on a Pennsylvania interstate carries a certain kind of driver, settled in at 62 mph with the cruise control locked.

State police run public reminders that the left lane is for passing, and the law tells slower traffic to keep right.

But on I-80 through the mountains, a rolling roadblock still forms behind one sedan pacing one truck.

The views are great, though.

Out-of-state drivers flash their headlights, fume, and finally slip past on the right.

The driver in the sedan never once checks their mirror.

8. Braking for Unseen Deer

A car ahead slows hard at dusk on Route 30, and you can't see a thing worth slowing for.

The driver saw something move along the tree line.

State Farm estimates about 147,000 animal collision claims in Pennsylvania in a single year, the most of any state, and it gives drivers there a one in 62 chance of hitting an animal.

Deer don't look both ways.

The worst stretch runs October through December, when bucks chasing does bolt across roads without warning.

So locals grow up scanning the shoulders of every dark road out of habit.

Trust their brake lights.

9. Renaming Every Highway

Ask for directions anywhere in the state, and the road names you get back match nothing on the signs.

In Philadelphia, I-76 is the Schuylkill, or the Surekill Distressway when it jams, a nickname commuters hung on it within a few years of its 1958 opening.

I-476 is the Blue Route because a 1958 planning report drew the winning route on the map in blue, and the red, yellow, and green routes lost.

The name stuck.

Pittsburgh drivers take the Parkway, Philadelphia drivers take the Boulevard, and hardly anybody involved can quote a route number.

A navigation app speaks in numbers, the locals speak in nicknames, and the visitor in the rental car misses the exit while translating.

10. Waiting Behind Buggies

On a two-lane road in Lancaster County, traffic crests a hill behind a gray horse-drawn buggy, and the drivers who grew up there settle in without touching the horn.

Locals know the drill: Hang back, wait for a clear straightaway, then pass slow and wide to give the horse room.

University of Pennsylvania researchers counted more than 630 crashes between cars and buggies statewide in a decade, and drivers unfamiliar with rural roads cause their share.

Patience is the whole skill.