Posted on 10/22/2016 5:19:03 PM PDT by ak267
The 11 foot 8 Bridge, also known as the Norfolk Southern–Gregson Street Overpass, located in Durham, North Carolina, United States, has attracted international media attention, including front-page coverage in The Wall Street Journal,[1] because it frequently tears the roofs off of trucks as they pass under the bridge.
The media has focused on video clips of the crashes, which are posted on the Internet for public viewing.[2] This railroad overpass along South Gregson Street in Durham, North Carolina, provides only 11 feet 8 inches (3.56 m) of vertical clearance.[3]
The 76-year-old bridge cannot be raised, because nearby railroad crossings would also have to be raised. The street cannot be lowered, because a major sewer line runs only four feet (1.2 m) under Gregson Street.[4]
(Excerpt) Read more at en.wikipedia.org ...
That first Penske truck was lucky nobody stopped behind him, reversing like that..
Are you claiming nobody makes high-reliability pumps?
LOL. Someone sent it to me a while back, and I always remember it when a discussion about low bridges comes up.
Here's a bridge truck competition story they would love. It's a tie. Both the bridge and the truck are killed.
Scroll down a bit and click on "View gallery (9 images)".
The guy somehow raised the bed of the truck loaded with stone while he was driving along I-90. It knocked the pedestrian bridge partly off its supports. They truck got trashed and they took the bridge down. It was a murder-suicide situation.
I noticed a few rental trucks bought it.
That had to be expensive for the renters.
Gov. Kaine in Virginia closed all the rest stops. His successor punished Northern Virginia for not agreeing to a Northern Virginia only sales tax increase by closing a number of our motor vehicle departments, causing a lot of inconvenience for our citizens.
if you notice most of the trucks are rentals or trucks that dont require a cdl to operate
So, because it has been there and is a well known issue, are they saying truckers are too stupid to go another route?
Wasn’t there a few trillion dollars set aside for infrastructure projects back in 2009 that was supposed to take care of things like this?
My favorite part of those videos is watching the bridge scrape off the AC units on top of camper trailers.
This brought back a memory of when I was a kid back in the 60’s all the moving van semi-trailers that traveled the south had tiny tires to be able to negotiate the low bridge clearances.
My grandfather (b. 1906) said he once got his truck stuck under a railroad bridge. He let the air out of the tires and made it through. He told me that story about 40 years ago.
Yep. Inexperienced drivers who think a truck is just a big car.
I noticed the rentals as well, but that implies locals, who should be well aware of the issue.
That must have pissed off the homo constituency, all those random hookups they now miss out on in the rest stop restrooms.
I’ve seen that before and still awesome.
Isn’t there another bridge in Massachusetts with the same issue?
Cincinnati has one with lots more accidents than that:
I think so. I don’t know where it is, but I’ve seen a number of viewer posts referring to it under YouTube videos like this one.
Actually, you would need redundancy for both pumps and electrical power as well as a large overflow pond in case it all fails. Power failures tend to happen at the same time as storm water puts especially high demand on sewer lines. Not to mention preventing above ground piping from freezing in winter.
The risk of flooding thousands of homes with backed up sewage is not worth the benefit of foolproofing something against drivers who can’t read a low bridge warning sign. There is only so much trouble and expense that can be justified to protect fools from themselves.
An offramp and onramp to detour around the rail line bridge for a truck route would be a better option with the added benefit of not taking the existing roadway out of commission.
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