Instead of infrastructure to fix the problem, give adequate physical warning to simulate “being too low”? Like rumble strips or flexible delineators but instead of the ground, they rattle against the roof? You can implement this in the roads leading up to the mouth, and will alert unsure drivers that they won’t fit, and freak out oblivious drivers enough to stop (or at last slow down) and see whats hitting the top of their vehicle (without damaging it).
Welcome to Durham! Your merchandise will see the light of day!
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That is awesome, thanks for sharing. I wonder how well it would work in cold climates, haven’t checked anything yet.
In the video, so funny that the one guy says, “it’s a pity that the infrastructure being built, isn’t built with input from the (transportation?) industry.”
One could also say, “it’s a pity that the transportation industry, when building equipment, isn’t taking into account actual existing infrastructure limitations.”
Those tunnel scenes in Sydney look scary.
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First day on the job.
It never ceases to amaze me how many people keep bending over backwards to excuse the truck drivers who end up crashing into this. Personal responsibility is a real thing, you know.
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You can see the structure flex in the slomo shot.
“You’re too tall, asshole!” may be a good alternative.
This is something a lot of people seem to ignore. It’s a state road over a municipal sewer crossed by a railroad company bridge. That’s three distinct groups with at least two of them having to come to an agreement on any solution that eliminates the low clearance. Basically the RR has decided that by installing the crash bar it is not their problem anymore, the state probably is at their wits end with warning devices, and the city just doesn’t want anyone to dig up their aging sewer. For everyone involved it’s probably easier to deal with the delays brought on by occasional impacts of over height vehicles than the headaches of a multi-year project. It might get taken care of as part of a major infrastructure project but there is no way this problem will be addressed by itself.
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Can someone please explain what it on the other side of this bridge that makes so many truck drivers make this mistake? Is it a shortcut to somewhere? Does it let you avoid a toll or a weighing station? Why do they do it?
There should be signs at all the roads leading into the city “Come See The World Famous Can Opener Bridge!”, and more signs as you get closer and closer “Vehicles Over 11’8” Get In Free!". And maybe a big model of a can opener just above the bridge (12’ above the road at least).
They might as well try and make it a tourist attraction, is Durham famous for anything else?
Because they don’t realise that the bridge is lower than their vehicle. They just think they’re driving down a normal road.
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In the EU, heavy goods vehicle drivers are required to purchase satnav units with specially programmed maps which enable them to avoid things like low bridges and bridges which can’t support the weight of their vehicle.
When instead they purchase regular consumer satnavs which lead them under or over the wrong bridge, it doesn’t suddently become the responsibility of the local council who owns the bridge to start a project to build a time machine and go back into the past and give the driver the satnav he was supposed already to have.
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Look, it’s very clear now. Thanks for your response.
It’s clearly nobody’s responsibility but the drivers. North Carolina drivers must be worse, that’s all. They should all have higher insurance premiums, just for being drivers in the city of Durham. Some of them even ran the red light. The ones that didn’t run it were probably just too lazy, since they’re all garbagey drivers.
See, there’s no way to fix the problem.
North Carolina drivers are just bad, that’s all.
This is Twenty-First Century perfection; I’m sure the top minds of our generation have already taken a look at it and found it resplendent. I see why some people might think that even replacing those sidewalks alone would cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Nobody can look at this picture and say there’s a single thing that could be done better.
It’s kind of a good argument for benevolent Creationism, when you really look at it.
True, but so are human factors. Among the first things you learn in human factors are the limitations of human judgment, heuristics, and biases. In a lot of ways our bodies and minds conspire against us to cause human error. Design should (to the extent possible) accommodate the error-prone nature of being a human. (Notice how the ATM now gives you your card back before it lets you get your cash?)
We can’t make humans better, so we need to do what we can with design. What’s challenging about this particular case is that the capabilities of design are so severely limited by the environment.
This is one of two main southbound local (i.e., non limited-access) highways through Durham. If you are following a map, or if you know Durham generally but don’t think about clearance heights, it’s a natural choice to get through the city, if coming from or going to a local destination (or for that matter getting to the nearest limited-access highway).
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I’m not sure why you chose a picture that not only doesn’t show bright flashing overheight warning sign but also shows the intersection lights covered. That doesn’t reflect what a driver actually sees when they are driving an overheight vehicle towards this intersection:
(and this image doesn’t even show the flashing lights on the bridge itself)
Also, most of the folks who run into the bridge protection aren’t from the Durham area, since the bridge is pretty famous there. It’s possible a pretty big ratio of the drivers who hit the can opener are from out of state, since this route is one of the best routes transitioning from the major SE-NW highway to the major SW-NE highway. If you stay on the highway only, you end up driving miles in the wrong way if you’re heading between anywhere in the Jacksonville, FL-Savannah, GA-Charleston, SC area and the Richmond, VA area, you’re probably going to take this route.
Finally, and once again, if someone hits this bridge, it’s probably a good thing they are off the road, even temporarily, rather than running a different red light and taking out a smaller vehicle or pedestrians.
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Winner. Short of getting Wile E Coyote to paint the space under the bridge and pay him to try and use it as needed, this is genius.
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Sure, that’s all reasonable.
But maybe someone can tell me why they don’t hang a bog-standard clearance bar at the corner of the intersection, instead of putting the sign on the railway bridge itself?
The FAQ makes a claim that it would somehow inconvenience a restaurant on a neighboring street, but I don’t see how that stops them from putting one in front of the bridge itself. Right now, a visually distracted driver doesn’t know they’re in trouble until they’ve hit the metal bridge itself.
Also I bet a lot of them feel if they clear the warning sign, they’ll be okay for the bridge.
Best of luck to them, they’ll choose to solve it or they won’t. It’s not the worst issue in the world, but it’s also not an impossible thing to fix. It sounds like there’s a bit of NIMBYism happening too, with the nearby business owners pushing back on any street changes.
To anyone that believes this is the best of all possible worlds, ordained by Heaven above, I won’t argue with you. This situation is clearly the best they’ve been able to come up with in Durham, North Carolina, and that is what it is.
And the main reasons I hope they fix it is that
- sudden bridge strikes and truck rolls can take out smaller cars and pedestrians (even if that hasn’t happened here yet) and
- not all of the crashes are red light runners, I don’t think that’s even the majority.
I wish them luck and success.
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You seem to not understand how the whole intersection is set up. With the way it is currently configured, no truck hits the bridge. There is a huge, yellow, reinforced I-beam at 11’8" height about 20 feet in front of the bridge. The trucks that hit, hit the beam, not the bridge.
You would be incorrect. There is a laser height sensor way back at the previous intersection to detect the approach of overheight vehicles. When an overheight vehicle is detected, the intersection at the bridge is triggered to cycle to yellow then red. The vast majority of the trucks that hit the bridge protector run that red light prior to impact. The remainder definitely run a “deep orange” light and are also speeding pretty significantly to have reached the intersection before red.
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My suggestion was for a soft clearance bar much farther out from the bridge, at the start of the intersection, not for a hard reinforced bar that acts like an immovable can-opener. More drivers hear a soft impact and start braking, rather than being crash-stopped at full gas. The clearance bars are not uncommon in other places.
And there are red-light runners, but there’s also a lot of accidents on green. I’ll take your word for it that red-light runners are the majority, but two out of the three 2019 crashes were under green lights. I won’t be watching the entire series of accidents, my point was that it’s not all red light runners, which is true.
Green
Green
And I really don’t care about it that much at this point, since it’s been pointed out that no one is taking suggestions in the first place, they just want to have a laugh at some funny car accidents. Which is also fine. I just don’t think the intersection is some engineering design success story. It’s not a priority for them, and I understand why.
That’s probably reasonable, but it would also have to be placed before the intersection, which means it’s going to be whacking a lot of trucks that aren’t trying to go under the bridge (ones that turn at the intersection, every day, to make local deliveries).
I’m also skeptical that, with a separate-cab truck, that the sound will really alert the driver, but what the heck, it would probably pay for itself in only a few averted impacts.
The ones on green occur after the truck gets stopped at a red light, stares at the flashing lights warning that it’s overheight, then proceeds through the intersection into the barrier, anyway. I guess that it’s better than the ones that run the red? Less dangerous but more oblivious?
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