Because PA 41 has a high accident rate due to being two lanes wide and carrying a high amount of local and through traffic, plans were made to improve the road. A highway-needs study by planning officials in Chester County in 1986 said the route was "deficient" and needed to be improved. In 1993, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) began the process of planning improvements to the road to enhance safety and the movement of freight. Three options were presented in improving PA 41: building a bypass of Avondale, building a bypass of Chatham, and widening the route to four lanes between the Delaware border and PA 926. The widening and bypass plans drew the opposition of Governor Ed Rendell and an activist group called Safety Agricultures Village and Environment in 2003, both of whom instead supported a truck ban and traffic-calming measures such as roundabouts along the road. In 2003, PennDOT painted white dots in the travel lanes along portions of PA 41 prone to aggressive driving in order to reduce tailgating along with adding rumble strips. In September 2017, a project began to construct gateways at both the north and south ends of the village of Chatham which would consist of a short median in order to alert traffic they are entering the village. Widening of the road at the gateways was completed in fall 2017, with construction of the medians to take place in spring 2018. There are also plans to improve safety and traffic flow at the route's intersections with PA 841 and PA 926; these projects are currently in the planning stages.