The Sidney Harbor Tunnel had a similar problem. They came up with an elaborate but successful solution.[1] There are detectors and huge flashing warning signs that light up. Then, there's the last-chance sign. At the entrance to the tunnel, pumps force a curtain of water straight down across the entire roadway. Then a powerful laser system projects a giant octagonal red STOP sign onto the water curtain, filling the entire height of the tunnel opening. That's in addition to the six red traffic lights, flashing red Xs above each lane, and a big STOP with a flashing frame above the tunnel mouth.
That was expensive, but after someone wedged an oversized truck into the tunnel, blocking it for three weeks, it was worth it. Gets tripped about 18 times a year.
Might have been better off erecting a giant, no-tech billboard picturing a previous crash. But your projected water screen is awesome - they could buy one and play footage from these youtube videos while they wait on the red light.
I think the difference is that the Sydney one is very clearing telling you, the driver, to stop right now. The 11 foot 8 bridge one just looks like a generic message to all truck drivers that they should turn if they happen to be too tall. It isn't clear that it only turns on when it detects a too tall truck. If the driver of the truck thought that the bridge was too low, they wouldn't try to go under it in the first place.
Ye it should say "Your truck is too tall" instead of a general "overheight must turn around" (it is quite obvoius what you need to do so it just wastes space).
The difference is the Sydney tunnel is at the end of an access road where the only way to go is the tunnel, while this bridge is around a corner and driving straight ahead with a vehicle that is too tall is allowed.
Presumably the truck is already at the intersection, so it's unlikely it can actually move out of the way before the light turns green. In the first video, the truck was 3 cars back. That means that it more than likely had no room to turn away until the cars in front of it went.
Seems to me that's the idea behind the setup. You put on a long red light -- long enough that hopefully the truck driver would notice the lit up sign and realize that he need to do whatever he can to make a turn when possible. Trouble is that for some people the light would have to be 10+ minutes long before they would notice that it's still red.
That's a total usability fail. "OVERHEIGHT MUST TURN" doesn't tell you that YOU, the driver currently approaching the bridge, are the one in control of a too-tall vehicle. I wonder if they've tried something as obvious as a static sign that says "LOW BRIDGE: CHECK YOUR HEIGHT", or a vehicle-activated sign that says "YOUR VEHICLE IS TOO TALL FOR THIS BRIDGE"
I thought you were joking... until I saw the video. It looks like a huge bright curtain with a 15-foot tall STOP sign unfurls in front of the driver! Whatever the cost, I'm sure it's paid for itself already.
It should be possible to design a sign like that pretty cheaply...
Just a toilet flush mechanism to a pipe with thousands of holes spraying downwards, and a bulb, lens, and plastic film for the logo.
The bulb would be a few of those football stadium arc lamps. One kilowatt per square meter is sunlight brightness, so you're going to be needing ~10kw of lighting.
The whole system, complete with installation labor, probably $30k. Most of that is in mechanical supports for the water system.
Except, government being government, I bet this was a $10M contract awarded to someone's mate...
I thought this problem is solved. 50m before the tunnel, we have a big arc with a long wooden red and white sign hanging by chains at the maximum height (like the ones in railroad crossings). if you try, you get hit hard by it. it's the most unambiguous message you can get.
Why cant they put a swinging bar at the tunnel height some distance before the tunnel? The bar knocks the top of the truck and wakes up whoever is driving to the fact that the truck is too tall.
At higher speeds, and with semitrailer-type vehicles, drivers don't notice the banging far behind them.[1] Much of the trouble at the Sydney Harbor Tunnel involves overloaded trucks with tarps on top. The truck may have taken the same route before, but become overheight due to the load. Thus, driver overconfidence.
They don't work - well at least they aren't idiot-proof. See the comment above regarding the Montague Bridge in Melbourne, Australia. They have those height bars installed and we still routinely have trucks being peeled open.
I have no idea how you can be so distracted when driving that you fail to register when your truck is whacked by those height bars, but ... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
No. Really. Driving while tired is considered to be as bad as driving under the influence. HGV drivers should really be seeing rigorous testing for this but - hurdur - freedom
And what makes it even better is that it's a truly geeky solution. You would expect something like this in the homes of geek super villains like Vector (from Despicable Me) or Bill Gates (yes, I am joking here)
If traffic to that tunnel were to get blocked at say 6am, expect mayhem across many routes in Sydney as that backs up, people take alternative routes along the harbour bridge and lower traffic bridges. The topography and indeed topology doesn't really like this tunnel to be out of use!
From the video, it looked like the truck braked faster than I would expect a human driver. I wonder if that water-curtain stop sign tripped up the truck's anti-collision braking system, that sounds like it would be a good target for such systems!
I never understood the high-tech approach to this problem. Where i am from they have large metal tubes dangling down a ways in front of the bridge. Makes it sound like you have already hit it.
Another more insistent approach I have seen elsewhere is to mount a large steel bar across the road, which takes the top of the truck off before they hit the bridge.
Friendly bit of advice, you may want to work on your hubris. In general, when a group of experts implements a complex solution there is a reason for it. Rather than reveling in your ignorance and feeling of superiority you may want to instead research those reasons. Fyi, others in this thread have listed them.
Wasn't meant to read as hubris, I genuinely was curious (if a little unclear).
FWIW I have read about this at length generally at a local level, living and working next to a couple of bridges with this issue. A high tech approach has been tried and abandoned with these bridges as they were (fatally) not effective (though not this high-tech). I naturally assumed there was some particular reason for the tunnel.
I read the rest of the thread before I commented, the ones you point out were written after, and they do indeed go some way toward explaining that particular issue at that particular tunnel. The original post did not explain anything but the bad road design.
While we are giving friendly advice, your comments may be better received if you gave them in a spirit of generosity, as I have taken yours, rather than jumping straight to judgements and epithets.
> Friendly bit of advice, you may want to work on your hubris. In general, when a group of experts implements a complex solution there is a reason for it.
As an aside, i work in the software industry, and here, that is absolutely not the case at all.
So do I and I disagree. I've often seen people make this claim only to have their "simple" rewrite crash and burn. They assumed the requirements were X and the system was overly complex for X. The requirements were in fact X+Y+Z+W and the system was complex to satisfy all those requirements.
I've found that approaching these with the question of "what drove them to implement such a system" leads to much more enlightenment than going from the point of "they're idiots for implementing it this way."
The 11'8" bridge has your second option: a heavy steel beam mounted a couple yards ahead of the bridge, braced to absorb the impact required to cut the trucks down to size.
It's more obvious in footage from the camera located on the left side of the bridge.
That will just cause people to pay less attention when they know they will get warned before driving in too small a tunnel.
I personally think things like red light with height detector or metal bars that bump into your truck and make massive amount of noise should be enough.
Water curtains with lasers projecting stop sign? That's just crazy. And we all pay for the infrastructure to save people who can't be bothered to stop before red light.
In my opinion if things like that start getting implemented this is just going to cause people to pay even less attention. Everybody should know to stop before red light.
What's beautiful about the 11 Foot 8 bridge is that quietly it's been a constant in my life. I distinctly remember watching the videos over a decade ago on this YT Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/yovo68
There's an element of schadenfreude that's so compelling in watching ordinary situations go terribly wrong.
I don't know if it's this bridge, but I remember there being a live webcam before YouTube for at least a similar overpass situation, with RealVideo™️ of the "greatest hits."
So far the best solution I've seen to this sort of thing (other than building a taller bridge) is the waterfall approach. Probably a bit spensie for some rando railroad bridge but it's clever nonetheless.
I've often seen large gates with hanging chains at the maximal height just before low bridges and tunnels. Wouldn't that also be pretty efficient, reliable and not requiring any maintenance? I suppose having an obstacle spring in front of you would be even more likely to make you stop, but if you're still going when some chains hit the top of your vehicle you deserve to have your license suspended anyway.
The trouble with 11foot8 in particular is that it’s right on the intersection, so through traffic passing by the bridge without going under it would hit the chains as well.
Here's an example from 20 miles away on a spur line of what kind of bridge damage can result: https://www.wral.com/17469149/
The road and railroad were only closed for 4 days, but it's clear that if the truck in this incident had a bit more momentum, the bridge could have been removed entirely.
They ought to make it lower, so it’s most obvious that a truck won’t fit. Make it no more than 2metres, whatever that is in American, so that only cars can go through.
A stock F-250 4x4 can be has high as 6'8" from the factory with out being lifted
A factory 2020 F-150 4x4 is 6'5" from the factory[1]
So I think you have you underestimation of the size of a truck. A common Lift would be 4in, and can go to 8in.
Your attempting to paint a picture of a "redneck" truck would be be a fully lifted, when lifting the truck you would then also add larger tires that would further lift the truck
So a Fully Lifted F-150 "Redneck" truck could be closer to 7'6" to 8' if not taller
I guess the trick is to find a height that is high enough to let those through, but also low enough that it would look too low for the large box trucks and such which often crash into it. Perhaps 9' or 10'?
Sure more lives are at stake, but I think the probability of physical harm to them is pretty low because
a) The bridge has been hit tons of times, and I don't think anyone in a train has been hurt yet.
b) The bridge is probably a lot stronger than the truck, so while the bridge may take damage and need to be repaired, the damage is probably not enough to harm train traffic.
c) If the bridge is damaged enough to harm train traffic, there's probably not a train coming immediately; any on-route trains can be likely stopped before they reach the bridge.
Every year when college students move back in and out, the powers that be put up illuminated construction signs everywhere to try to keep the number of rental trucks on roads they shouldn't be to a minimum. They're mostly successful.
I drove a box truck (most often Penske/Ryder rentals just like the ones you see in this video) around most of the nation for a job when I was younger. The only two cities I had real trouble with clearances were Boston and Chicago. New York City was also a pain but for different and obvious reasons.
I suspect if it hasn’t happened yet a decent commercial software solution would be to produce an app that took OSM and overlay all of the bridges with clearances in major cities into it so that you could route around them after entering your height. I specifically remember doing a lot of reversing back up streets in Chicago because nothing like that existed at the time (this was in the early 2010s).
How about something counter-intuitive: lower the limit? There is a built-in hard limit imposed by the structure itself. Set the marked limit to something well short of that, like 8 feet. Then add very obvious soft barriers like light swinging bars to indicate the lower boundary. That would encourage anyone driving anything that might actually hit the hard limit to take an alternate route. (Of course, that means there actually needs to be a realistic alternate route.)
" it’s not practical here. There are many overheight trucks that have to be able to drive right up to the bridge and turn onto Peabody St. in order to deliver supplies to several restaurants. Making Peabody St inaccessible from Gregson St would make the restaurant owners and the delivery drivers very unhappy." [1]
at the end of the it seems most of the trucks are often Rental Trucks drive by people that likely should not be driving a large truck in the first place. In the US you do not need a CDL or special endorsement to rent many of these UHaul type trucks since they do not have Air Brakes, all you need is a normal operators license.
I think the parent comment may be suggesting to low the limit on the bridge even more, like adding a wall to the underside of it, so that it's obvious nothing higher than normal cars or perhaps a large van would fit.
Then again, maybe a large portion of the crashes are from people who forget they're driving a truck, so that might just make the carnage worse...
What is so special about this bridge? Why do people drive under it without checking their height? You wouldn't normally think you can just drive under any bridge, would you?
It doesn't even look like a very low bridge. Why do people approach it without a care in the world at full speed?
My vehicle is only 2m tall and I still do take a quick look at height signs as I approach them.
According to the Wikipedia article [0], the bridge is very old and does not meet current clearance standards:
> It was designed in the 1920s, and opened in 1940, with a clearance for vehicles of 11 feet 8 inches (3.56 m). This was a standard height at the time it opened. The standard clearance, since 1973, has a minimum height of 14 feet (4.3 m), which is 2 feet 4 inches (0.71 m) higher than the bridge as built.
I imagine most trucks are built to be just under 14 feet so that fitting under bridges is not usually an issue.
Another thing I’ve noticed watching some of these videos is that most of the accidents are rental trucks. Presumably many of these drivers have never driven a truck in their lives and ignore clearance warnings out of habit.
I ruined the top of a rental truck. It wasn't bridge it was a tree overhanging the street. Partly because the tree was not directly overhead like a bridge I didn't notice it was too low and all I was trying to do is park the truck so I was going slow but yea, smashed the top of the truck. Truck Rental company says it happens at least one a month.
A substantial number of these crashes (maybe the majority?) are rental trucks, being driven by people who aren't accustomed to operating a large vehicle.
A typical driver of a car, minivan or SUV in the United States will virtually never encounter a bridge or other obstacle whose height above the road is low enough to matter to them, so most people simply never have a reason to pay attention to those height signs.
The one exception is parking garages, which often have very low roofs, where most trucks or full-size vans won't fit. But that's a totally different situation.
11'8" is a 28 inches shorter than the current minimum permitted (for new structures) by federal law. So, it a surprisingly low clearance.
That, and it's really pretty common for people to not pay much attention to road signs. For example, in my neighborhood, there are quite a few intersections with "no turn on red" signs posted. And it's a regular occurrence for people behind me to lay on the horn in a rather distressed manner when I'm first in line, and choosing to obey traffic laws. I live on a street with no outlet, and my kids just love watch lawn care companies that have gotten themselves stranded from the living room windows. It would appear to be a tad bit difficult to back your way straight down a full city block when there's a 15 foot trailer hitched to your extended cab pickup truck.
For what it's worth, I used to work about a block away from a completely different underpass that was also old and had a very low clearance. And I suspect that the only real reason why that one isn't similarly famous is that none of us ever thought to set up a webcam.
I speculate that the most special thing is that the guy has a camera on the bridge. We see everyone who hits this bridge. That combined with a pretty low bridge (it was raised a few years back but it is still low enough to catch a lot of vehicles) and a culture of using phones to give us driving directions gives us this situation.
It's much lower than most bridges in the US so truckers not used to thinking about their height because they're below the height of most bridges can get caught. Add to that many of these crashes are in rental trucks so you have people even less used to having to think about the height of their vehicle encountering this abnormally low bridge.
The maximum standard height for a vehicle is 4 metres in Europe. All E-routes in Europe require that bridges and tunnels can clear at least 4 metres, otherwise they cannot get designated with the E-route. Is there a similar concept of safe routes for lorries and buses in the US?
I was helping a friend move from North Carolina to Rhode Island a few years back and he rented a truck that was way too big. From NC to New Jersey we kept seeing "Truck Route" signs and they all referred to trucks that were still taller than our truck (I don't remember the height). So we started to pay less attention to the signs.
Then Google Maps sent us into New York. We saw something about all trucks take some other road, but stuck with the route Google recommended. Then we saw a big "All trucks over X height take next right" sign and the height was like 2 feet lower than our truck.
That started a whole separate adventure, but while there may be some kind of safe route thing in the US, there are plenty of routes that vary from state to state, and at least back then google maps didn't have a way to enter the height of your vehicle.
The federal interstates are supposed to have 16' (4.9m) clearance under bridges. However in older parts of the country (mostly the Northeast) there are many bridges that don't have that clearance and have been grandfathered in.
And of course, Texas has bigger clearances, because Texas.
edit Looks like Texas may have consulted with the Army's Transportation Engineering Agency for design input, as it's mentioned in their design standard manual
The US has a standard clearance of 14' (or 16' for interstate highways); anything lower than that would have low clearance signs of various sorts. These values are comfortably above 4m.
The roads that have these low clearances are usually local roads whose right-of-way was constrained a hundred years ago, or "parkways" originally devised to permit motorists to enjoy scenic drives and unencumbered by heavy truck traffic (possibly also built 100 years ago!).
Do they have a requirement for bridge/tunnel heights? I recall an American trucker telling me that such a requirement did not exist in the US, but he could have been mistaken.
America is a collection of thousands of jurisdictions that all have authority based on who is paying for the road.
Interstates are controlled by the Federal Highway Commission and must meet Federal Highway standards as the federal government generally pays for them
State Routes are controlled by State Regulations
County Routes are controlled by County Regulations
City Routes are controlled by City Regulations
There is zero standard that is applied universally. This is is viewed by some as a negative personally I prefer the federalist system over a central authority
Most State and Federal routes do have Minimum Heights, though exceptions can be made, one thing we often see in the US not remeasuring the surface, there have been more than a few time where the height is reported as X but that measurement was decades old and several resurfacing layers had been added to the real height is lower. Or the road pitches to one side and someone measured the highest side not the low side
Placing an obstacle between the bridge and the intersection would be fairly pointless, because once you hit it, it would be too late to stop before hitting the bridge.
(EDIT: in addition, a hanging warning sign would have to be suspended from something. My guess is any such structure would need to be made very sturdy and expensive, or else it would just get knocked down and increase the hazard to pedestrians and property when somebody hits the sign at significant speed.)
Placing the obstacle anywhere else would impede vehicles that aren't trying to go under the bridge.
Look at the video. Such a structure already exists. There is a yellow beam meant to protect the bridge right in front of it. It probably does most of the can openjng to spare the bridge
There's an intersection right before the bridge - the beam is already at the "warning" location to protect the bridge. Bridge strikes arent' cheap and train companies HATE closing bridges for any reason (including replacing them).
Or maybe red warning lights instead of yellow warning lights. Maybe they have changed it. But yellow lights to me doesn't suggest "you absolutely need to stop".
edit: okay. Now they have a sign. With white lettering. In a location where we know from years of experience drivers aren't looking. This makes no sense to me. Everything about this is bad design.
There are at least five signs at eye level on the road leading up to the bridge, four of which are the standard yellow warning signs: https://imgur.com/a/owITLZC
In addition, the illuminated "OVERHEIGHT MUST TURN" sign flashes to attract attention.
I get what you're trying to say, but this bridge is better-marked than the vast majority of road hazards one might encounter. There's a certain point beyond which it doesn't make sense to keep spending time and money protecting people from themselves.
The bridge just shrugs the hits off it is very tough. So the damage and the problems are really for the trucks not observant enough to see half a dozen warning signs and lights.
They are the ones who end up paying, not the railroad that owns the bridge.
That would, I'm guessing, make things worse by both increasing the risk of t-bone collisions, and giving drivers turning from the cross street even less chance to do anything avert a collision.
It's possible that, short of removing and replacing the bridge (which would have its own consequences, since it serves an active rail line in a major city), the only thing that would actually help much is getting stricter about what size of vehicle people are allowed to operate without special training and a special class of license.
> That would be prohibitively expensive because a sewer main runs just a few feet below the road bed. That sewer main also dates back about a hundred years and, again, at the time there were no real standards for minimum clearance for railroad underpasses.
Ah ok, thank you for clarifying that. So that leaves the next best option: remove it from all navigation systems, that way at least the route will be only used by locals familiar with the situation and all other traffic would automatically detour around it.
For how far out? A village near where I grew up had a low railroad overpass. The road underneath had been lowered to create clearance, but not very far on either side. The “low clearance” sign had the height at the overpass marked on it. While technically correct, it only “worked” for modest length straight trucks. The typical articulated truck spanned the depression.
The sewer and the railway are immovable objects, hence the problem.
The rental truck depot up the road contribute to the problem. In theory this could be relocated but this has to have a cost greater than the loss of a few rental truck tops.
There is a road junction next to the bridge meaning the parallel road limits the options for slowing down tall vehicles before the bridge.
Thus far in this comment thread your comment has been the only one that sheds some light on the situation.
I used to work really close to where this bridge is at my last job and many of my coworkers had worked in offices even closer previously. Supposedly, every time there was a crash people would rush to observe what happened even though it was a fairly common occurrence.
The bridge is located in a kinda odd space to do construction. While I imagine it's possible to retrofit or dig it to be deeper, it likely would have been really inconvenient to the adjacent businesses.
They actually raised the bridge another 8 inches recently. The 11foot8 channel covered a lot of the work being done and stuff.... and the 12foot4 bridge still gets new victims from time to time, just less often.
I live a block away from a can-opener bridge. We haven't had anything since quarantine, but there's usually two or three trucks a year that get stuck in it. We had one week where there were two trucks and a bus.
For the greater good they should install something that makes a lot of noise but doesn't damage the car say 5m before before the hard hit. Maybe fine $100 per soft hit to pay for it? They can say well we've just saved you a lot more!
Still not high enough. They raised it another 8 inches to make it an even 12ft not too long ago, but evidently that still not enough.
One would think they would've looked more closely at the traffic on that road and adjusted it accordingly.
It's also really silly to have a sign indicating that too large vehicles must turn, which most drivers won't read/see in time, and practically force them to crash into the bridge, instead of having some sort of 'bumpers' ahead of the bridge for those vehicles to bump into first (I've seen those at entrances of parking lots that have both above ground and underground parking).
> a sign indicating that too large vehicles must turn, which most drivers won't read/see in time
When the sign activates, it also causes the traffic light to turn red. In theory, that provides plenty of time to notice and respond to the sign; in practice, collisions still happen because people just run the red light.
If someone's sufficiently determined to do something stupid and reckless, there's only so much you can do to discourage them.
> instead of having some sort of 'bumpers' ahead of the bridge for those vehicles to bump into first
That's what the big yellow beam is; it was installed to protect the bridge. If something was installed farther away (i.e. before the intersection) it would get in the way of large vehicles that were intending to turn before the bridge.
Running a red light should be an automatic re-exam for your license. Not two weeks ago: I stop for a red, the guy behind me stops, the guy behind him overtakes both of us and nearly kills a cyclist that had started to move in front of me. A fraction of a second quicker response by the cyclist off the mark and he'd be dead.
Note people aren't running reds here necessarily. A system detects a tall vehicle moving towards the bridge & times a red light. They stop, & during that time they might notice that the bridge is low & there's a sign telling them the max height. Some don't notice, & when the light goes green they drive on under
> That's what the big yellow beam is; it was installed to protect the bridge.
Yes, that one protects the bridge - what I'm talking about is a 'warning' bumper, that you can run into, but won't damage the vehicle (as others' comments here have mentioned). It would be put up further up ahead of the bridge itself (not at the bridge). Something like this:
That's going to get destroyed by every 13' truck that smacks into it. The bridge is just on the other side of an intersection. The other three paths from that intersection are perfectly fine for 14' trucks to drive on.
And those bumpers might not cause structural damage, but I'm sure you wouldn't want random plastic objects scraping across your roof when you drive, right?
> That's going to get destroyed by every 13' truck that smacks into it
Why, yes, a 9 foot pole would get run over by a 13 foot truck. There's a reason I used the words "something like..." and not "exactly this..."
> but I'm sure you wouldn't want random plastic objects scraping across your roof when you drive, right?
Again - it's used as a WARNING SYSTEM - you prefer returning the truck with a torn off roof, or a still-fully functional one with just some extra minor scrapes?
The placement would have to be on a street where tall trucks are currently allowed. So now they can’t traverse the other nearby streets, even if they had no intention of using the underpass.
Ultimately I think the proper solution would be either far more clearance, or a dedicated lane for trucks/large vehicles (probably ALL trucks) forcing them to turn.
The casualty of that solution might be buses (as others pointed out this road is also being used for), but the city can make exceptions for those (as is usual in most places due to stops being commonly in the right turn lane).
It's clear from the massive number of videos, and of various types of drivers (truck rentals, furniture delivery trucks, campers, etc.) that the current "system" they have is inadequate to avoid these crashes. "It just doesn't work". Just blaming the driver only isn't a solution (I actually wonder if the city/railroad has ever been sued because of this).
Hey, I take back my rejection of your idea. I just saw someone else post this image [0] of a similar situation in Australia, and seems like that would work just fine, even for tall trucks that are gonna turn anyway. Make those dangly bits out of a weighted pool noodle.
It is a one-way street, two lanes, so you'd have one lane dedicated to all trucks going left and one lane dedicated to all trucks going right. And all cars could go straight under the bridge from either lane.
That is already what is set up. All trucks must turn before going under the bridge.
You make it sound like it's normal that people would expect that they can drive into a bridge without checking the height first - as if it's the bridge's fault for being too low. Why don't the drivers check?
Because they're not used to driving trucks. Modern light weight cargo vehicles accelerate and brake as though they are personal cars. Spend an hour or two behind the wheel of one and you're liable to forget that you have this huge box behind you that extends well over the height of the cab, the part that is in your immediate field of view. It takes some serious situational awareness to keep that at the front of your thoughts when driving an unfamiliar vehicle on unfamiliar roads.
The basic assumption people make is that the roads they know or that are indicated by their navigator are the roads that they can drive on. I don't recall even if my navigator has a way of setting the vehicle height, I should check that.
Absolutely. And then you do it for a couple of hours concentrating on the road and driving the car between the lines nicely widthwise and you'll forget it when you need it most.
I've done a lot of driving, some of it boxtrucks and larger and when you switch vehicles it is a thing that you need to remind yourself of constantly. The easiest solution would be to dig that road out to standard depth, the next best would be to drop it from all navigation systems so that at least people that do not know about it won't try to use it.
Somewhat related to this is the problem of children being left in hot/cold cars accidentally.
When our son was very young (< 2 years old), my girlfriend/wife was usually the one to take him to daycare in the morning. Occasionally she would have to leave for work early or was running late and would ask me to take him instead. This seemed to me to be a perfect storm to have him left behind in the car when I went to work: not used to having him there, I might drive directly to work "on autopilot" and get out and leave him asleep in his car seat.
I often wondered if this was at the heart of kids being left in hot cars.
Anyway, I forced myself to get into the habit of always turning around and checking that the car seat was empty before getting out the car, every single time, just in case.
Of course, it never happened, but I can see how easy it is to forget stuff like this when you're simply not used to doing it.
That’s exactly why it happens so often. Most of us live (well, until recently lived) lives of quiet routine, and a quiet child in the back seat is surprisingly easy to overlook when that’s not your routine.
> And then you do it for a couple of hours concentrating on the road and driving the car between the lines nicely widthwise and you'll forget it when you need it most.
Must be different locations being different.
But where I'm from you couldn't remotely just drive regardless of your vehicle height. You'd smash into something within minutes.
Here the right hand lane is up to truck standards and if it isn't it is very clearly marked as such, I wouldn't even know of a road that isn't explicitly closed for trucks that you could not take an 18 wheeler on.
But - and this is the crucial bit - the main distinguishing factor between what is a truck and what counts as a van is different in Europe than in the US/Canada. In the US/Canada on my normal 'lightweight' license I can drive a 10 ton truck, in Europe I'm limited to 3500 KG which puts an automatic limit on the size vehicle, a typical sprinter or boxvan would not be higher than 3.5 meters and everybody else will need a class 'C' driving license at a minimum and once you pass that you shouldn't need to be taught about vehicle height any more. There is a loophole called a BE trailer but those are very rare and the people that drive them tend to know their limitations.
Even so there are plenty of professional drivers in those crash videos that fall for it just the same. I'll give the rental van drivers a pass as long as they cross on the green light and they're only a few inches high. Usually the height of the truck will vary by that much just based on acceleration / deceleration and angle of the 5th wheel hitch if it has one as well as the angle of the road approaching the barrier and the length of the vehicle. If you measure the vehicle while stationary on flat ground you might think you can get away with it when you really can't.
I used to drive under this bridge almost every day. It is remarkably well signed. But some people just can’t be reached. I’m reminded of the elective attention test.
I am pretty confident an abnormally low bridge would have fewer accidents — the fact that it looks like it's just high enough doesn't help matters.
Perhaps the simplest solution is to introduce a light hanging (eg rubber) plate to make the underpass appear even shorter so people do stop and look at the signs.
THE POINT IS that the height difference isn’t that “massive” as you describe it - LOOK AT ALL THE VIDEOS (that’s right: plural) - it’s clear that the lack of clearance is not so obvious.
Not when 99.999% of your driving experience tells you that bridges aren’t a threat. These are primarily rental trucks, and people are not accustomed to thinking that their head is several feet below the top of their vehicle.
> You make it sound like it's normal that people would expect that they can drive into a bridge without checking the height first
1. Most people would correctly expect that road-approved vehicles would clear all bridges.
2. This one is literally a couple of inches out for clearance; it looks like the truck is 12ft (or whatever the current bridge height is), which is probably what the truck's height indication is. It's not unreasonable for the driver to expect to clear the bridge even knowing the height of both, especially if they match closely.
3. The bridge was recently lifted to its current height - if this is a 'local' driver, they probably expect all vehicles to clear it now, knowing it got lifted.
> One would think they would've looked more closely at the traffic on that road and adjusted it accordingly.
They didn't raise it only eight inches because they simply felt like it and picked a number out of their hat - eight inches was the most they could do without also impacting a nearby level crossing. Ballasting plain track up to a higher level can be done relatively easily (up to a certain extent of course), whereas touching the level crossing requires more work and also creates problems with the road geometry there:
If you raise the track across the level crossing too much, you create a nice little hump on which long vehicles can now get stuck, which isn't what you'd want, either. Fixing that in turn means rebuilding an even more considerable section of the crossing street, with all that that entails...
That was expensive, but after someone wedged an oversized truck into the tunnel, blocking it for three weeks, it was worth it. Gets tripped about 18 times a year.
[1] https://youtu.be/pRKA7m-tbqM