Aug 30, 2010
Schadenfreude for the day: Trucks running into a low bridge
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There’s a railroad trestle in Durham, NC that is so low there’s a website dedicated to showing us all the trucks that get into accidents there.
Now that, my friends, is putting the internet to good use.
Here’s the best crash:
(via)
And here’s a video to show just how often this happens–13 crashes in 13 months:
Apparently this has been happening for awhile…
Truck hits bridge and breaks apart, 05/09/1968.
Update:
Here are a couple shots of the location from Google street view…
(Obviously, the railroad would rather replace a crashbar from time to time rather than keep fixing their bridge.)
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It would seem to me that the warnings about that bridge are insufficient. Or maybe it’s time to raise the darn thing. We have the technology.
In my hometown there is bridge that is 11’8″ after getting tired of trucks hitting it all the time about a ½ mile and again at a ¼ mile they put up lasers at 11’8″ if you broke the beam you would get flashing lights. Trucks still hit it regularly.
It looks like this bridge has that same set up.
The sad part is it looks like the majority of the trucks that ran into the bridge are rented moving trucks…meaning they are being driven by amateur truck drivers who usually don’t have to pay attention to those kinds of warnings. How scary.
That’s exactly what I thought. My husband just drove our stuff 900 miles in a rented Penske…that would have made our move significantly worse.
When I was a child walking to school in Chicago we often saw this happen at the corner of Irving Park and Keeler. There was a railroad brige of low clearence, next to the Interstate 94 ramp. Trucks coming off at the ramp and turning left and not paying attention to the height of the bridge often seered off the tops of their trucks. It was a fun thing to watch for an 8 year old on her mundane walk to and from school. I think they have since corrected the problem.
OOps,sheared not seered.
This bridge is only a couple miles from my house. I kind of wish some fella would do this while I am watching. I bet it’d be great entertainment. Is that wrong?
some times the monthly trestle crash can be the only exicitng thing that happens in durham esied the football games at Duke, or Art walk…
Wear a suit of armor or something. In one of the videos on the site, they point out how cars near the intersection caught flying debris from the crashing truck — smashed windshield in one case.
My hometown had a railroad bridge like this across the street from the church I went to growing up. We saw this on more than one occasion. The difficulty with railroads like this is there’s often nothing that can be done. In the case of my hometown, it was next to a paper mill and any changes in height would have a significant impact on the track. They’ve resorted to adding more warning lights.
I’d think one could dig out the road under the bridge instead of raising the bridge itself. That might cause some foundation problems (and certainly some downtime) but certainly something that could be engineered. What’s the motivation, though? Some poor ignorant sap has to pay for peeling the top on his rental truck, and nothing happens to you, the city manager.
I drive under that bridge all the time, and have seen trucks take it very slowly. Durham is awesome. I like it almost than Raleigh. It’s definitely prettier.
Sorry, Raleigh Readers. I like Raleigh, too. But the trees are not as good…
PS. Endangered Durham, a link on that site if wonderful too. I read it all the time.
Just make the road deeper.
Lazy mayor.
Just another typical example of your tax dollars at work improving and protecting our cities.
To whomever asked if it was wrong to watch this for entertainment…this is our daughter’s favorite video to watch. “Can I watch the twucks get wun over?” I think we’ve watched it at least 50 times.