Trucks VS Bridge - 11Foot8.com

[Bruce Wrenn]

In Durham NC on Gregson Street is a railway bridge that has a clearance of 11' 8" . Despite signage, trucks still hit the bridge. A local business owner put up cameras to record the action. Web site is 11Foot8.com. I been watching several you tube videos of the action. Look, enjoy and pity the poor trucker who hits bridge. Even more amazing is STUPID drivers in cars who try to go around trucks when they are backing out from under bridge.

[Frederick Skelly]

I like the one where the truck hits the bridge, then backs into the car behind him. That poor truckdriver is havin' a really crappy day.

I wonder why the city doesn't fix this if it has happened "139 times"? Could they dig that street a couple feet deeper to add clearance, or would that destablize something?

[Wayne Lomman]

Not much beats a good laugh at someone else's expense! Having spent a bit of time on bridge maintenance, I got to hear the excuses for this type of incident. The best one was a guy who swore the wind blew his 20' container off the back of his truck while flatly denying the perfectly matching damage to the bridge and the unsecured twist locks on his truck.

Sure the county could re engineer the road but truck drivers are supposed to know their load dimensions and be able to read signage. What do these drivers do when there are tree lined roads? Does the local truck body repairer have an advertising billboard in the vicinity?! Cheers

[Bruce Wrenn]

Most of the trucks are rentals, being driven by someone with no experience. Once we had a driver relate about his experience in Yazzoo City MS. He was hauling a load of logs, when local police stopped him and asked if he hit the stop light in the middle of town. Of course he said no till he got out and looked, and there was stop light wedged between the top two logs. As with anything else, there is two sides to the story. Over on US 70 in Garner is a bridge that had the marked clearance till they added a couple inches of asphalt in a repaving project. Only took a couple trucks before the engineers figured that one out. The state had to pay for damage to trucks. That's why on most interstates, they mill the asphalt down under bridges. One driver related to us his troubles. For years he had hauled steel from Sparrows Point in Baltimore, using a flat trailer and a Mack "B" model tractor. His boss bought him a new Freightliner cab over. On first trip thru tunnel, he was in right lane as always before. Said heard a loud crash, and felt a jolt, When he looked at right side of cab, he said "All I saw was green tiles going by where the corner of the cab should have been."

[Bob Grier]

It ticks me off when there is a low clearance that is consistently hit. Something could usually be done to to mitigate the accidents and in many cases there is federal money to help.

If the cost of increasing the clearance is significantly less than the loss to the public due to damage and injuries then the city should request federal/state funds to correct it. The feds have a cost benefit analysis process to determine whether it is cost effective to correct situation and funds are available every year to fix safety problems. If no one is being injured in the accidents then it may not be cost effective to fix.

An alternative to increasing the clearance would be to place an overhead physical warning structure of some sort with sign lettering "If you hit this you will hit the bridge". It isn't that expensive to dangle some chains or something that sets of a loud horn or in some way makes the driver aware he is going to hit the bridge before he passes the last bridge bypass exit. To stand by and let people continually ruin their day, damage the bridge, or cause injuries is not being very safety minded.

[Ole Anderson]

Interesting that in the first video the truck runs the red light and a car behind him gets sucked through. I see it all the time. But the green was so short I am wondering if it triggers red on approaching over height vehicles? But more interesting is if you look carefully they installed a well braced cross beam ahead of the bridge to avoid further bridge damage from future impacts.
http://11foot8.com/

[Marshall Harrison]

Most of the trucks are rentals, being driven by someone with no experience. Once we had a driver relate about his experience in Yazzoo City MS. He was hauling a load of logs, when local police stopped him and asked if he hit the stop light in the middle of town. Of course he said no till he got out and looked, and there was stop light wedged between the top two logs. As with anything else, there is two sides to the story. Over on US 70 in Garner is a bridge that had the marked clearance till they added a couple inches of asphalt in a repaving project. Only took a couple trucks before the engineers figured that one out. The state had to pay for damage to trucks. That's why on most interstates, they mill the asphalt down under bridges. One driver related to us his troubles. For years he had hauled steel from Sparrows Point in Baltimore, using a flat trailer and a Mack "B" model tractor. His boss bought him a new Freightliner cab over. On first trip thru tunnel, he was in right lane as always before. Said heard a loud crash, and felt a jolt, When he looked at right side of cab, he said "All I saw was green tiles going by where the corner of the cab should have been."

Some of my fondest and earliest memories were rinding in the front passenger seat of an ole B Model Mack with my Dad back in the early '60s. I miss you Dad.

[Wes Mitchell]

Interesting that in the first video the truck runs the red light and a car behind him gets sucked through. I see it all the time. But the green was so short I am wondering if it triggers red on approaching over height vehicles? But more interesting is if you look carefully they installed a well braced cross beam ahead of the bridge to avoid further bridge damage from future impacts.
http://11foot8.com/

It looks like in 2016 they added the "Overheight Must Turn" sign. When an overheight vehicle approaches the sign starts blinking and the light turns red to give the driver a minute to stare at it.

[andrew whicker]

maybe it's a form of fatigue life steel bridge testing.

[Lisa Starr]

There is a bridge immediately north of the manufacturing plant where I work. After years and years of complaining to both the township and state DOT, they finally placed signage on both intersecting streets indicating the low underpass and the height (11'4"). Despite that, we still get trucks daily that need to find a way to turn around, when they figure out the bridge is too low. At least once a year, the bridge actually gets hit or a truck gets stuck under it.

[Eric Danstrom]

It ticks me off when there is a low clearance that is consistently hit. Something could usually be done to to mitigate the accidents and in many cases there is federal money to help.

If the cost of increasing the clearance is significantly less than the loss to the public due to damage and injuries then the city should request federal/state funds to correct it...f no one is being injured in the accidents then it may not be cost effective to fix.

An alternative to increasing the clearance would be to place an overhead physical warning structure of some sort with sign lettering "If you hit this you will hit the bridge". It isn't that expensive to dangle some chains or something that sets of a loud horn or in some way makes the driver aware he is going to hit the bridge before he passes the last bridge bypass exit. To stand by and let people continually ruin their day, damage the bridge, or cause injuries is not being very safety minded.

All of the issues are explained in the FAQ. There's a sewer line under the road and the railroad has no interest in shutting down the route for months. And as mentioned, there's an overheight sensor that triggers a 50 second red light with a led sign specifically telling the driver to take a right turn and avoid the underpass. They can't install the overheight chain and beam because legitimate trucks use that route and take a right to deliver to local businesses.

Sometimes you just can't fix stupid.....

[Steve Demuth]

It looks like in 2016 they added the "Overheight Must Turn" sign. When an overheight vehicle approaches the sign starts blinking and the light turns red to give the driver a minute to stare at it.

Which means they know a big truck is there - so why not, if you're not going to fix the bridge - make the sign really direct. Flashing red and blue lights that say "YOUR TRUCK IS TO BIG FIT UNDER THIS BRIDGE. TURN NOW." ?

I mean, yes, people should know what they are driving, and pay attention to the height signs, but if you've gone to the expense of a flashing sign and detectors, why go not go big on the warning? "Overheight; Must Turn" is is like begging for a driver we already know isn't all that tuned in to conclude that they don't mean him, they mean trucks that are overheight.

[Dave Lehnert]

I was driving on the expressway in a construction area where they were repaving the road. Came to an overpass where there was a huge piece of metal hanging off the overpass. About 1/4 mile down the road was a 18 wheeler car hauler parked along the highway. A white F150 on the top of the truck was missing its top. OUCH!

[Jim Koepke]

Interesting that in the first video the truck runs the red light and a car behind him gets sucked through. I see it all the time. But the green was so short I am wondering if it triggers red on approaching over height vehicles? But more interesting is if you look carefully they installed a well braced cross beam ahead of the bridge to avoid further bridge damage from future impacts.
http://11foot8.com/

Well, the story explains it:


This time the bridge wouldn’t let go so easily of the truck, and so they had to bring in a big tow truck to remove the busted reefer truck.

The truck driver was probably smoking some of what he was carrying. :eek:

That is why the bridges need to be higher than the driver. :D

jtk

[Jim Koepke]

Some of my fondest and earliest memories were rinding in the front passenger seat of an ole B Model Mack with my Dad back in the early '60s. I miss you Dad.


Same here riding with my dad. Only he had a pick up truck. When going across the San Francisco bay bridge back then the lower deck was for trucks and the upper deck was for passenger vehicles only. The bottom deck only had three lanes since there were also commuter train tracks on the bottom deck.

jtk

[Jerome Stanek]

Back in 88 I had to do a store remodel in Rita WV and on the way to it was a huge bolder that over hung the road with a painted sign Truck Stop. You could see all kinds of paint and chips from trucks hitting it.

[Mark Blatter]

Not a bridge, but I worked in Salt Lake a couple of weeks each month years ago. Our branch terminal was just down the street from a Mayflower terminal and a Coke warehouse. On the corner where all the trucks turned was a tall phone junction box with a 6" set back off the street, but almost right on the corner. The phone company repair guys had a real sense of humor. They were constantly replacing the box after it was smashed flat and started putting sticky letters / numbers on each new saying 'Times run over xx'. I started watching it and the last one I saw was 28 times. They finally moved it back to the fence line, but had to dig up the concrete sidewalk to do it.

[Larry Edgerton]

I used to own part of a paving company in Texas and we were moving a gravel processing plant across town in Kerrville. We had a huge sand separator to move and had mapped out the route with a team of guys to lift wires on the way. When we turned the corner the driver started jamming gears, foot on the mat and clipped all the wires on the last couple of miles North out of town. When he got to I-10 he was supposed to cross over to the other side so that there was enough clearance as the expressway was downhill and taller on one side. He went straight, hit the I-10 bridge, knocked the separator off of the lowboy doing structural damage to the bridge. I-10 was closed in that lane for a month.

After he hit the bridge he pulled the truck over, jumped in his girlfriends car who was waiting for him and was never seen again. We found out later that he was angry that I had bought in to the company as he had been there a long time and had planned this all out, was all packed to move to California and left right after. I still remember seeing the power lines flying and I was about a mile away when he hit the bridge and the noise was still very loud. In the end insurance took care of it and although we got a lot of teasing, business actually picked up. Every one knew who we were then.

[Frederick Skelly]

I used to own part of a paving company in Texas and we were moving a gravel processing plant across town in Kerrville. We had a huge sand separator to move and had mapped out the route with a team of guys to lift wires on the way. When we turned the corner the driver started jamming gears, foot on the mat and clipped all the wires on the last couple of miles North out of town. When he got to I-10 he was supposed to cross over to the other side so that there was enough clearance as the expressway was downhill and taller on one side. He went straight, hit the I-10 bridge, knocked the separator off of the lowboy doing structural damage to the bridge. I-10 was closed in that lane for a month.

After he hit the bridge he pulled the truck over, jumped in his girlfriends car who was waiting for him and was never seen again. We found out later that he was angry that I had bought in to the company as he had been there a long time and had planned this all out, was all packed to move to California and left right after. I still remember seeing the power lines flying and I was about a mile away when he hit the bridge and the noise was still very loud. In the end insurance took care of it and although we got a lot of teasing, business actually picked up. Every one knew who we were then.

Man, that guy sounds like a real beaut! He got that mad that you bought in?
Are you a tough boss Larry? :) :) ;)

Seriously, though. It makes a good story now but I'll bet it wasn't one drop funny at the time. Not one drop.

Fred

[Jim Koepke]

After he hit the bridge he pulled the truck over, jumped in his girlfriends car who was waiting for him and was never seen again. We found out later that he was angry that I had bought in to the company as he had been there a long time and had planned this all out, was all packed to move to California and left right after.

Was the guy ever brought to justice on this?

jtk

[Larry Edgerton]

Was the guy ever brought to justice on this?

jtk

Not that I am aware of. We had another guy quit and when he did he parked a truck with asphalt in it behind a barn and left so we did not find it until it was hard. These are some of the reasons that I work alone these days.........

[W Craig Wilson]

que? no puedo leer el final

no puedo leer el final