That SUV guy following the truck was kind of stupid as well. He had plenty of time to back up when he saw that truck driving foolishly at him.
Is North Carolina a “Stand your ground” state? As a bicyclist, its pretty clear that vehicle owners have a over bearing belief in their ownership of the right of way.
The only way this bridge gets fixed is if some horrible accident takes out the bridge for a long time… And to do that, you’re going to have to take the “crash bar” out first, before detonating the second charge…
The alternative is to take out the railway above the bridge.
Traffic was still passing the SUV on the right, and cars were bunching up behind the SUV. He gets hit twice and still when the SUV driver backs up you can hear the cars behind him honking. Probably he should have turned left onto Main to escape, but the whole situation was so surreal it would be hard to know the right course of action.
The real question is what kind of truck driver crashes into a bridge, then reverses into oncoming traffic in the middle of an intersection, crashing into someone else not once but twice.
Seems to me all the truck hits over the years is going to make that bridge unsafe for train travel. Probably cheaper to set up a stronger alarm system, maybe based upon lasers or something.
Maybe some kind of airbag could be triggered that would block said truck without damaging that truck. Then force the truck driver to reset that airbag for the next fool.
At SOME point the cost of all the accidents must be greater than the cost of increasing the bridge clearance, I just wonder what the magic number will be. More than “139” I guess.
Completely agree here. I had a lady back into me a few years ago. She started from at least 30 feet away. I was calmly watching her come at me because, hey, who backs up for 30 feet without checking their rearview?
By the time I realized she was not checking her rearview, I panicked and fumbled with putting my car into reverse.
I was thinking - just close the road. I mean it looks like it isn’t a main road - traffic circle it for the 3 lanes, and if you need to make it across you just go up or down a block an over.
Or maybe its that hundreds of thousands of cars manage to do it fine. Closing it down for a few people a year isn’t worth it.
I suspect it’s a matter of externalized costs. The people who pay the cost for the accidents (largely the people who own or insure the trucks) are a completely different group than the people who would be on the hook for paying the cost of increasing the bridge clearance.
This question has been answered so many times, on every discussion thread I’ve seen, that I can’t help but think that people who bring these things up are just driving trollies.
Especially true since most of those truck drivers probably aren’t even locals, since local drivers are presumably pretty familiar with their famous bridge. If the city was to spend money to fix the issue, it would mostly go to benefit people who probably don’t pay local taxes anyway.