I have a new life motto 
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Even better would be an exploding scoreboard.
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Wait let me give it to you. “ThE RaIl RoAd CoMpAnY ShOuLd RaIsE ThE BrIdGe!?!?11”
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There are RV rental places that use instructional videos as part of the process. I could imagine having to watch something like this before renting a truck. Another useful scene for a video could be approaching a bridge with a toll. It’s easy to forget that the toll for large vehicles is a lot higher than for cars. The first time I experienced that in a truck, I just barely avoided having to turn back and find an ATM!
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This bridge is just American Exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny writ large.
<sarcasm> Put check points both sides of the bridge. Stop each vehicle that approaches. A person with a 3.75 metre pole with built-in spirit levels walks around the vehicle. If any part of the vehicle or cargo is taller than the pole then it is suggested to the driver via small words, pictograms or interpretive dance that dread things will befall them should they proceed under the bridge.
Alternatively get in your TARDIS and go back to when they designed the railway and its bridges and make the bridge heights 5 metres. Then return to the present day and wait for the person with the 5.01 metre tall vehicle to drive under the bridge. <\sarcasm>
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I got eleven thief to go…
…from an anagram server…
No kidding there. There’s a 12’0" bridge nearby on Chapel Hill St., and Raleigh has a truck-eater on Peace Street as well.
The funny thing is, even though I drive a tiny Honda Fit, I’m much more cognizant of clearance signs since I discovered the 11foot8 channel.
There is a whole slew of low-clearance viaducts on the CN/Metra Electric rail line in the Chicago south suburbs. I’ve occasionally seen a boxtruck with a custom roof job and a police car next to it at one 11’9" bridge. ETA: A lot of these bridges are concrete and have battle scars as well.
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Then we’ll get these:
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I see nothing wrong with eating up pixels arguing about how to fix this problem. It’s as enjoyable as watching trucks sardine their tops.
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Yes, we can as a matter of physics route traffic wherever we like, but each extra mile traveled of truck traffic through an urban area increases costs. It increases both the maintenance costs on the roads, but it also increases the risks of fatal accidents. You would largely be moving people from a grade separated crossing to a level crossing with a higher rate of fatal accidents. So you shift the smaller burden off of the bad drivers and create a larger burden for everyone else.
No, but sometimes there are situations where the risk you’re trying to mitigate is smaller than the problems you would create fixing it. Most of the examples you cite have a complex interplay between non-obvious mechanical quirks (or pure mechanical failings) and human expectations. Low bridges are very obvious. They’ve adjusted the bridge itself to the maximum feasible amount and introduced a system of added clear warnings for overheight vehicles. They don’t control driver training. They could of course fix it by dumping a billion dollars into a massive redesign of a solid chunk of Durham to offset both the risks of existing level crossings and this bridge, but it would almost certainly have more effect in other places.
It’s not the city’s bridge.
It would dump about 10,000 cars a day onto other roads with more life threatening issues. The area has other crossing points, but they are level crossings that are more likely to cause lethal issues. You’d be trading some damaged vehicles for more deaths.
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(hint) They live under the bridge.
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I don’t think anyone is defending the stupidity of the truck drivers.
I’m mostly accusing the city of being at least as irresponsible as the truck drivers.
Out of interest, and because there have not been nearly enough responses to this post, how many of these accidents have happened at night?
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Most are during the day. You can see them all on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/c/yovo68/videos
It’s hard to tell if there are fewer at night because there are fewer trucks at night or if the signs are more effective at night because of the higher contrast.
No, they don’t. First they don’t have to because the bridge and the road aren’t the under the city’s control. Second a city or other entity is only required to take reasonable precautions. Beyond a certain point aiming for perfection on these, largely non fatal, crashes takes resources from other higher risk road improvements. You can add a laser light show, water jets, rumble strips, or any other feature, but each has a cost and once someone has been held at a light watching signage and ignoring it, we have little reason to expect that they will be paying enough attention to stop in time, given how short the distance is from perfectly acceptable traffic to damaging.
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Facts not in evidence. You are assuming additional distances, when its at least as likely that the overall distance travelled would be shorter, or neutral.
Ooh, I like that idea. Kind of like winning a jar of pickles if you come in last in a sailing race.
Maybe a free buzz cut/flat top at the local barber?
Or a fancy meal involving a raclette?
I’m trying to think of “scraping” themed prizes.
A package of themed band-aids?
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City, railroad, state, whomever is responsible. I think ‘reasonable’ includes human factors. Cost could easily be less; it costs more to add more signage where less signage might be more effective. The cost of a collision with the bridge could be extremely high if it does structural damage to the bridge, although it seems like they constructed an extra beam to take the brunt of the collision. It’s totally irresponsible to construct an abnormally low bridge with inadequate (increasing signage can easily be considered a reduction in adequacy) and say ‘welp, it’s up to the trucks to cover the damage to their vehicles’.
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Maybe it’s that simple. “Hit bridge, win scrapes.”
The bridge is older than most of the surrounding city infrastructure. It wasn’t abnormally low when it was built because highway standards didn’t exist yet. And yes, there are real, concrete reasons why most of the typical physical remediations are impractical at anything like a reasonable cost. If you want to demolish several blocks of historically protected buildings and regrade a square mile or more of central Durham, you might be able to get somewhere…
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