TIL people are still apologizing for idiots hitting a bridge with obvious signage. I’ve taken box trucks under bridges that were only a foot or so higher than the top of the truck (whose height I frickin’ memorized before I started off), and I felt like I was gonna hit the bridge. You keep going when the big yellow bar is clearly too low? No sympathy.
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Yep.
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@wazroth I’d like to nominate the above as a new/alternate bingo square.
And I think you’re getting close here!
Exactly! Or once, all exhausted after a day of cycling we drove the car with the bikes on top into a parking garage. The groan of metal as the bike handles got twisted on the yellow metal safety bar was gut wrenching.
But WE totally felt like the idiots. We did not in any way try to place the blame on the parking garage, which was stationary.
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Clearly the idiot pilots were to blame for the B-737 Max crashes.
Clearly the idiot pilots were to blame for the losses of the Challenger and Columbia.
Clearly the idiot train driver was responsible for the Clapham Junction rail crash.
Clearly the idiot captain of the MS Herald of Free Enterprise was responsible for the ferry rolling over.
Clearly the whole field of human factors research is a waste of time, and we should just put up more idiot signage. Good job team. Lets cure cancer next by just telling patients to stop being idiots and we’re all going to die anyway.
Well, those examples don’t seem fair. Equipment malfunctions aren’t what’s getting these trucks trimmed, it’s a failure to follow safety signage.
ETA: I hold these thoughts concurrently- some of these drivers are just unobservant idiots/this bridge thing is clearly a problem that needs to be solved/it seems like they’ve gone a fair way toward solving it.
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Is a truck with a Crysler V8 as Semi Hemi? Is a frightened truck a Semi-quaver?
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that’s not entirely accurate, but why do equipment malfunctions occur?
Equipment malfunctions occur because people don’t read the signage …
edit:
ETA: I hold these thoughts concurrently- some of these drivers are just unobservant idiots/this bridge thing is clearly a problem that needs to be solved/it seems like they’ve gone a fair way toward solving it.
As I wrote above:
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.
There is nothing wrong - or contradictory - with blaming each driver for their crash AND blaming the city for all the crashes caused by their bridge.
Where I live if you crash your truck into a bridge in this fashion, you get fined a huge amount of money, and if you fail to learn, your heavy goods license is taken off you.
I have no problem with this policy.
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Holy shit if this isn’t the biggest case of whataboutism I’ve ever seen.
Yes, clearly the human factors investigations involved in all of those super-complex, varied and multifaceted incidents have a direct parallel to noting the height of your vehicle as a driver.
Let me guess, you have a poster of the perfect solution fallacy on your wall with a big red 
placed on it, too, right? There’s a reason so many of the trucks that have hit this bridge were rentals. You want a human factors change? how about “Truck rental companies should be required to state the height of the truck to truck rental customers at the time of rental”?
You do a disservice to the complexities of modern systems by trying to suggest parallels here. And IMHO this is the very reason why cities waste so much time and money on shit like this instead of the umpteen things the average US city could better spend their extremely limited resources on.
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Give up. make that underpass into a pedestrian and bicycle path.
Another option is to make the entrance dramatically shorter. Enough that no truck driver will think it’s possible to pass underneath. But where small cars can still make it. Set it to the height of a minivan, and watch it destroy full size vans and pickup trucks.
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Wait, so the Challenger blew up because the pilots didn’t read safety signage?
(I know that’s not what you’re really saying. But your comparisons are a bit of a stretch, compared to a person driving a truck. And the people driving the trucks didn’t suffer an equipment malfunction…it’s just a bit of a stretch. I’m trying to think of a better analogy, now it’s kind of a challenge…no pun intended.)
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I want to see a giant foot suspended and triggered by a tripwire. When the too-big truck trips the wire, the giant foot unlatches, stomping the crap out of the truck before it goes under the bridge, cutting it down to 12’ 3". Now it will fit.
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So, because of one non-standard underpass in one city in central North Carolina, people picking up a rental in Yuma AZ have to sit through a lesson on vehicle heights? Cool, I can’t imagine how that might be ignored.
Signs don’t work. If signs worked, there would have been one, maybe two trucks wrecked at the bridge. Adding more signs to a system that isn’t working won’t change that.
The captain of a ship or aircraft is responsible for the safety of the vessel. Commander Richard Farrington was probably a bit surprised to find out just how far that responsibility extended.
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That would probably result in painful and hilarious Penny Farthing accidents. Okay, let’s do it!
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Having driven several RVs over the decades, with AC and other roof protuberances maxing at 12 feet, I’ve managed to never scrape anything off. Because I read the fucking signs. That low overhead at the mountain lodge? Drive around. Bridge ahead is under 12 feet? Drive around. Avoidance beats scalping.
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Yes, of course, you’re correct - there are no height restrictions on garages, loading docks, or century-old low-height bridges in locations across the US. My mistake.
Perfect solution fallacy - you do not know how many accidents were avoided by the presence of signs at the bridge. We do know (because the trolley historian present has the information on his site) that the changes to signage resulted in fewer incidents than before. So sure, signage has not stopped all accidents, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t had a tremendous impact on the overall number, especially when you consider the reduction observed by changing it.
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OH OH OH
Anyway, as I’ve said many times before, there’s a reason I give this problem to my Systems Analysis students for extra credit. All the usual functional fixes that one would put in place to address the human factors of the situation are difficult or impossible to implement, at least at anything like a reasonable cost. I’ll go out on a limb and guess that jacking the track was the last blood to be squozen from the stone here.
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This is 2020! The hell with signs and noises. It’s time to escalate!
Flame Throwers, tracer rounds, eye targeting lasers.
The bridge says this aggression will not stand, man.
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But, so, then why aren’t the drivers responsible for the safety of their trucks?
I totally get wanting good, systemic solutions. It just seems like your position is, dare I say, scraping the edges of a consistent approach?
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