Well played! He almost made it completely through to win the bonus points. As they would say in Durham, “you cain’t fix stupid”.
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One of my kids did this The bicycle did not like it, the car (Japanese) suffered remarkably little damage…
The irony? They had done the original study of “bridge bashing” for British Rail as a result of which a program of warnings, laser height detectors and so on got underway to reduce the costs. Not that the railways care about what happens to the trucks, but it can damage their girders and brickwork, thus causing the ultimate crime of cancelling trains.
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From the 11 foot 8 FAQ:
Could they install a low-clearance bar?
A low clearance bar is a bar suspended by chains ahead of the bridge. Overheight vehicles hit that bar first and the noise alerts the driver to to the problem. I understand that this approach has been successful in other places, but 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.
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Someday team genetic engineering or team biomedical engineering is going to have to fix that.
Because when team social engineering tries; it goes poorly.
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As the parent of someone who was once an expert on this subject, I have to tell you that the problem is more complex than you realise. You’ve just done a fine demonstration of the saying that “For every problem there is a solution that is simple, obvious and wrong.”
- 15M is not going to be enough to stop a truck doing in excess of 30mph.
- You think a zoned out driver is going to notice a few clanks? Many trucks now have wind deflectors on the cab roof and probably would hear nothing.
- High winds.
- Unsuitable terrain.
- Access for vehicles that actually need to get up to the bridge to work on it is complicated.
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It’s a train bridge, IIRC. Insanely expensive to raise, especially since it’s the drivers’ fault and thus their problem. And IIRC they can’t lower the street anymore forninfrastruce reasons.
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It’s an old bridge. Way older than the idea that having large trucks is a good idea. Since the bridge will likely not be harmed (badly) by these incidents, it really is the 0.01% problem.
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If only there was an integrated transport system so that the costs of remediation measures could be properly evaluated and apportioned according to responsibility for the root cause of the problem. Rather than leave the market to decide, because the market will always decide that rare but serious black swan events are not worth planning for.
guess they could have a screen on the other side showing actual footage adding a component to the selfie arsenal
The other part of the problem here is that the crossings east and west of this underpass are level crossings. So not only would you have to re-grade miles of track to accommodate raising the bridge, you’d also have to come up with another solution for the neighboring level crossings. And then it gets to be like pulling on a hangnail…
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“You’ve got a real type of thing, going down, getting down …there’s a whole lot of rooftops coming off…”
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Shine a laser across the road at 11 feet 6 inches and if it’s interrupted, light up a huge flashing skull with other skulls for eyeballs.
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When I look at the video, I see no barrier between the intersection and the bridge. Why not hang a barrier 20’ back by chains to notify the driver?
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would have been nice if this was the dutch version of Downfall. But this is the only such subtitling I’ve found.
They do something very similar to this! They have a height detector before the intersection, and if it’s tripped, the signal turns red and a huge sign reading “OVERHEIGHT MUST TURN” turns on and shines at you while you wait for the green.
The only improvement I could imagine would be a sign reading “YOUR RENTAL TRUCK WILL NOT FIT UNDER THIS BRIDGE”. But really, if they don’t read “trucks must turn” and they don’t read “overheight must turn” and they don’t read “11’8” clearance" for 2+ blocks before the bridge, why would we expect them to read, or react to, anything at all? (Short of whacking the truck hard with something made out of metal, but then you’re also damaging trucks driven by non-idiots that weren’t planning to go under the bridge.)
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That might help with the occasional turning truck, but even then there’s only about 20 feet of usable roadway between the intersection and the crash beam – if you’re going the speed limit and going straight you’d get about half a second heads up.
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Me and my boys have been following that site for years. They will appreciate this.
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So much for the myth of “professional” truck drivers. They’re worse than drunken teenagers.
Why not a railway-type barricade? Or one of those waterfall curtains like the one in (I think) Australia? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk9DjO-_rT8
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