Does the bridge have an official troll? It certainly has earned one with all the havoc it has managed to wreak. Maybe I don’t understand electronics well enough but couldn’t a laser be set at the bridge level that would light up a screaming, flashing sign that says; Moron Alert! Stop your truck or you’ll be sorry!
3 Likes
plus 
EDIT: Maybe I’m the bridge troll?
26 Likes
In case you haven’t realised, the OVERHEIGHT MUST TURN sign is only lit up when an overheight vehicle is detected.
6 Likes
Is this a new time record for getting bingo? Seems really fast. Maybe it’s pent up demand, due to the reduced number of accidents, due to the, you know, totally inadequate preventative measures put in place. 
7 Likes
They are coming a bit faster than usual, but I am not sure we’ve made a full bingo yet. Oh, I missed by implication one from @tenbrook:
20 Likes
I get what you’re saying, but I agree with @cosmotic Ultimately each driver IS individually responsible for their vehicle, but at some point the city becomes responsible for the collective damage the bridge is causing. I submit that that point lies somewhere between zero and 80 wrecked trucks per year.
In the health and safety world, putting up signage (and then more signage, and then MORE signage) is known to be a failing approach, and in many jurisdictions provides zero legal cover for the PCBU. Highly simplified, the useful hierarchy of useful mitigations is engineering the problem away, training, and finally signage.
In this case the city tried signage, but that clearly didn’t work. They also tried engineering the solution away, but that didn’t work either due to well known local constraints.
My suggestion is engineering based: close the underpass to all vehicular traffic. Make it pedestrians and bikes only.
5 Likes
Every troll has a day job.
6 Likes
This fails at the basic systems thinking level. This is one of the main southbound thoroughfares in central Durham. It’d be the small-town equivalent of dealing with low clearance in the Ted Williams Tunnel by closing I-90.
6 Likes
Not really. A road network has more than one street. There are any number of other roads in the area - including within about 100m both east and west - which accept the additional traffic.
3 Likes
What I’m saying is that, with the increase of clearance and the tonne of signage and warning on the bridge and surrounding area, that point is now in the past and that the smaller set of drivers now having accidents are indeed morons.
While it’s a nice thought, I think you’ve brushed against the “what if they made the road ‘NO TRUCKS’ instead?” bingo square there. Apparently, it’s a major thoroughfare for all traffic in that area and alternate routes are not close to matching its efficiency.
7 Likes
Untrue!
They raised the bar as well, if you look at the raising videos on the channel, you can see the metal spacers used for this purpose. It remains lower than the bridge by the same amount that it was before the increase.
7 Likes
This doesn’t hold if you consider the actual geometry and traffic flow of the other roads. Detouring right all the way to Main and Buchanan is a serious detour and not appropriate for the traffic load. Detouring left, you’d have to pass Duke St (which is one way north) all the way to the downtown loop.
4 Likes
This topic is getting closer to bingo than most of the others, I’m impressed. Probably caused by a decrease in incidences 
One thing I will say about watching these bridge videos - when I rented a truck from Home Depot right before the plague hit, I made sure to find out what the clearance height was, juuuust in case. 
13 Likes
… all the way … a serious detour … have to pass Duke St … all the way …
If only there were some kind of mechanical contrivance which made it easier to travel long distances, especially when ‘all the way’ is the unimaginably vast distance of a couple of hundred metres.
This isn’t a fundamental physical constant we’re dealing with here. It’s a road net. A road net built by people. A road net built by people that isn’t working because people be peopling. So, change it.
3 Likes
Hummm? So, are you? Pictures would help, You got an official outfit, costume, whatever. You in a trollies union, organization whatever? Do you laugh at morons when they hit the bridge, flip them the bird, dance around? Any ritual stuff you do? Just curious.
2 Likes
I’d have declared the guy running the 11fooot8 site as the official bridge troll. Even though he lives more or less above it, not beneath it 
9 Likes
A careful driver who plans ahead when driving an unfamiliar vehicle? What strange magic is this? Next you’ll be telling us you actually pay attention to blaring warning signs.
12 Likes
I would suggest a more engaging indicator, like fabric mesh sign that drops down in front of the vehicle, when an overheight vehicle is detected (instead of just flashing lights). Easily, automatically rolled back up in 10 to 15 seconds, unlikely to cause damage to vehicles or anything underneath it, and probably much more likely to cause the desired response of a driver putting on the brakes and noticing the warning.
Best of internet. No contest.
3 Likes
Maybe the city could hang…foam bumpers or something across the road a block or so BEFORE the can-opener bridge? The too-tall trucks would then (in theory) hear “boom! boom! boom!” as the foam hit the top?
