Happy Holidays, everyone. I love these chilly winter days of mirth and merriment, where everyone spreads joy and shares gifts. I was reminded this week of a specific video that always brings me happiness this time of year that I want to gift to you. A video of trucks hitting the same low-ass bridge.
I was chatting this week with our old friend and compatriot Patrick George about how random website traffic can sometimes seem. You spend months working on an investigative piece you think will shock the world and it’s inevitably something trivial that takes off.
In particular, Patrick recounted to me of the time when he was deep in a piece on federal drug testing when he decided to post a video at the old lighting site with the inspired headline: I Can’t Stop Watching Trucks Hit This Low-Ass Bridge.
It took off, somewhat unsurprisingly. I can’t remember what the numbers were, but they were high and they made our month (and then some). The bridge in question is a 70-year-old railroad trestle in Durham, North Carolina not too far from Jason.
As documented on the website 11foot8.com, created by someone with a view of the bridge who was smart enough to put up an early webcam to document the mayhem, the bridge was built at a time when trucks weren’t that tall:
This train trestle is about 70 years old. At the time when it was built, there were no standards for minimum clearance.
Between 2008 and 2019, on average, a truck got visibly damaged a little more than once a month at the bridge (150 crashes in 140 months). However, every day I see trucks that trip the overheight warning lights, stop and turn into the side street. So the vast majority of drivers heed the warnings.
There’s something quaint about this. I spent much of yesterday with my family sharing Instagram Reels of people having hilarious accidents as documented by iPhones, Ring cams, and all number of other surveillance devices we’ve blithely added to our lives. But 10 years ago, when this video was released, it wasn’t quite as common to get videos of disasters. Let alone the same disaster happening again and again and again.
Here’s the compilation of accidents from the original height:
The bridge has since been raised to 12′ 4″ and a bunch of signage has been added to make it harder to hit. Yet, somehow, people keep hitting the bridge. Here’s an updated camera of the updated bridge:
Ahhh that’s the good stuff.
I grew up about a block from this bridge, and it was just about visible from the cafeteria of my middle school – along with the building that housed Bob Ingram’s Porsche collection. I used to stop at the windows before lunch to check if he’d left the 959 or Carrera GT out front or another truck had been peeled.
The bridge has not been raised. There is a level crossing not far from it and the railway said raising it would not only be cost prohibitive, but mess up their grade approaching the crossing. The city ended up having to drop the road surface below the bridge 6″.
As the Christmas carol goes: „Lift up your heads, ye mighty…bridge.“
About a week ago there were two trucks that got stuck side-by-side on Storrow Drive in Boston. https://www.universalhub.com/2023/its-most-wonderful-time-year-simultaneous-double Trucks getting stuck on Storrow Drive are so common that “storrow” has become a verb.
I drive a 14’ tall box truck around downtown Seattle on the regular.
It’s not that difficult.
You’ve just gotta pay attention.
My gps always tries to direct me under a 12’9” bridge.
Read the signs.
Oh man, do I enjoy a good old fashioned Penske Peel.
You should see the one in glenville, NY. Same height. And a propane truck hit it this week and exploded.
Did the whole bridge have to be rebuilt or something?
I saw an interesting video on bridges and fire safety (made in response to the I-95 closure in Philadelphia) and it presented simple truths: there tend to be few or no deaths when bridges catch fire. (In the case of the I-95 closure, the truck driver whose truck caught on fire died, but no one else did. Authorities closed the bridge before it collapsed.) And because of this, the fire “resistance” isn’t particularly taken into account for many road bridges in their construction.
Of course, this is subject to future changes, because at some point the economic cost of I-95 being closed exceeds the actuarial/engineering costs of human lives many times over.
No idea yet- it happened 2 days ago.
Ah I commented on this above and didn’t see this post. Yeah the Glenridge Bridge. That one is only 10′-11″! It’s notorious in our area, and gets hit all the time. They’ve added tons of prevention systems, yet somehow it still got hit 9 times this year. It used to get hit upwards of 20 times a year.
It’s an important road, and my understanding is that it’s impossible to lower the road (just a mere feet away this road crosses a creek) and as we all know, it’s basically impossible to raise a rail bridge.
That’s literally down the street from me, ama
I’m always hoping to catch it live – I’ve seen some white knucklers, but no can openers live yet.
I’ll see how many chalupas we can expect to wedge under there, at least.
Really loved 3rd or 4th guy who managed to run the red light and peel that box truck like a sardine can. The handful of folks who manage the full peel deserve some sort of award. So much cringe for the RV drivers who wanted to go for an old-fashioned AC-free living experience.
I remember the original post on the old site and it was probably the post I shared more than anything ever over there. It certainly served as a gateway hit to that site for a handful of my friends.
An awesome follow-up on this would be getting an insurance adjuster to do a cost estimate for one of these compilations.
This is endemic to the East Coast and its 19th century rail infrastructure. I used to live in Portchester NY where the New Haven line ran to NYC and they had multiple low bridges https://patch.com/new-york/portchester/too-tall-truck-slams-into-port-chester-bridge
The creator of 11foot8.com deserves praise as the first to document it on live Webcam.
Here in the PNW the rail lines are newer so my city’s traffic legend is a boulder at 7-11.
Back in the 80’s, when I would drive from Lubbock, TX to Odessa, TX to see my girlfriend, there was an overpass coming into town that had a series of rhyming signs leading up to it that read:
“Sixteen feet, this is no lie.”
“Lights will flash when load’s too high.”
“Over height? Exit right.”
I wonder if they’re still there?
“Burma Shave”
My hometown has one 11’1”, I’ve always thought they need a livestream on it, got hit almost weekly, they’ve tried flashing signs etc but I’m told it gets hit just as frequently.
And Jets fans still believe their team will make the playoffs one day. You can’t educate stupid.
At least they’ve put up a boom/girder to protect the bridge from these idiots.
Every time I’ve commented about this intersection, I suggest they put up a swinging boom at the intersection so overheight trucks would get a rude but not catastrophic impact before they get to the bridge. That would ruin all the fun, I guess.
Yes, the good news is that the bridge itself never takes any damage from this and the protective girder gets at most some superficial scuffing that only takes some touch up-paint to return it to prestine condition
There is (or was, at one time), several lengths of heavy chain hanging from a beam over the road on the approach to this bridge. They would loudly drag across the roof of any over height vehicle, hopefully alerting the driver. It’s hard to gauge how effective they were.
Anybody that keeps going after hearing that, deserves their fate.
Almost 6 decades back, as a poor college student, my father worked at a laboratory which tested the efficacy of radiation treatments on certain cancers using rabbits. One of his jobs was dealing with the waste the rabbits generated—which had to go to a specific facility due to low-level radioactive contamination. One day, running late, he had to go through rather than the legal but way longer patchwork of backroads around the city center.
Traffic was fierce, and he got a bit rattled. At some point he realized something just wasn’t right. Glancing in the mirror, he was horrified to see that he had hit the dump lever at a light a ways back. Love you, Dad! I mean, I’ve done things—but never anything like dumping slimy radioactive rabbit shit down Omaha’s main drag at rush hour on a Friday.
That was your Dad? I remember friends saying the street glowed for several years after that happened?
D’oh!
Truth can sometimes be stranger than fiction.
“Slimy Radioactive Rabbit Shit” would be an incredible name for a band, FWIW.
I live in nearby Raleigh, and for awhile around 2012-13, I worked in a building right around the corner from the 11foot8 bridge. I saw the aftermath of several incidents of trucks hitting it. They would actually hit the “crash bar” which was a massive steel beam that was placed in front of the bridge so that trucks would hit that and not damage the bridge itself, which is used by both passenger and freight trains.
The bridge was a source of great amusement and a bit of perverse pride for the locals. Many of us were a bit put out when Durham finally relented and lowered the roadbed 8″ (after years of saying it was impossible due to infrastructure under the road).
Every once in awhile someone will suggest sneaking out there every night to lay a layer of asphalt, gradually building it up to the former 11′ 8″ clearance, and bringing back the glory days of 11foot8.com
Boston has this same phenomenon with the low height bridges on Storrow Drive.
It’s colloquially referred to as, “storrowing.”
The typical case is late August to early September, when hundreds of thousands of college students are moving in. Despite all the PSAs from the schools, someone is going to rip the roof off a Penske, Budget, U-Haul or other box truck on Storrow Drive.
Despite the absolute abundance of signs, and the chains hanging from some of them to give you a warning that you’re about to really have a bad day.
Sometimes there’s near misses. Sometimes other commercial vehicles ignore all the signs, chains, etc. and rip the roof off a tractor trailer. Probably happens once a month.
Boston.com: https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2021/08/19/boston-storrowing-what-to-know/
NBC 10 Boston: https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/storrowing-a-boston-tradition-officials-wish-would-end/3128351/
WBUR: https://www.wbur.org/news/2023/08/24/storrow-drive-stuck-truck-instagram
Where we live there are no low bridge issues.
But we have a tunnel that was built in the 1930s. Two lane traffic and very low clearance. And very clearly marked warnings about what size trucks are allowed to enter.
In the early 1970s they built a nice 4 lane tunnel for the trucks to use with a 55 mph speed limit.
Yet we get about a dozen semi trucks a year that enter and get stuck, despite lots of warning lights and signs that say they are prohibited.
In Alabama, truck drivers see that as a “suggestion” rather than a rule.
Shit happens.
It does indeed
Friday I watched a tractor, while maneuvering to back in to a dock, drop the front down a slight bank, displacing a protective bollard and high-siding himself. Once a heavy wrecker had brought him back up, the poor guy spent literally 20 min trying to get backed in correctly. Don’t know if just a novice, or completely rattled by almost taking out a fire hydrant, but it was painful. I really felt for him: most of have been there one way or another
“Shit happens”
More like Swift happens, amirite?
As I look back on 2023, these vids remind me of the choices that are made in life. Whether it’s jobs, relationships or car projects; all the warning signs are there yet we still procede with disastrous results. So as I pour a tall glass of no regrets, I wish everyone an amazing holiday and look forward to another year of bad decisions.
NO RAGERTS
SEND IT INTO 2024
‘Tis more likely a tribute: the spirit of Super Dave Osborne, alive and well just about five years hence!
I can’t believe nobody’s mentioned this. ‘Tis entirely possible I’ve missed the tone of the piece. My apologies for “too sooning.”
My hometown claim to automotive fame. It’s also just around the block from the gas explosion that destroyed a private Porsche collection a few years ago.
Wait there was a Porsche collection down there? How did I not know about this?
I had friend that lived in the apartments across the street when that happened, facing the site. He said he was watching the fire as the FD came to fight it.
Apologies for late response but yes. There was a garage with a private porshe collection that was significantly damaged. I believe the old site had a fat amount of coverage on it.
Zero mention of Taco Bell menu items in this article…
IS THIS REALLY HARDIBIRD?!
Anyways, folks, how many chalupas do you think we could fit under that bridge?
These are the important questions we should all be asking.
Well, it’s about fifteen Puffalumps above the roadway (Stef, if you see this, please tell me if I’ve estimated a Puffalump correctly). How many chalupas to a Puffalump? Five? Eight?
It depends on the Puffalump, which usually range between eight and twelve inches in height, so we’re talking between 11.66 and 17.5 Puffalumps. So, yeah, 15ish would check out.
No idea on the chalupas-to-Puffalumps ratio. I’m just not a big Taco Bell fan anymore and haven’t been in ages.
My mother in law lived near a really low bridge near Ely, Cambridgeshire in the UK. They had a similar sort of situation, constantly getting hit. They actually had height sensors up the road that would make a detour light flash if a vehicle was too tall and a bypass that would let the vehicle go up and over the tracks instead of under them. People still hit it all the time.
This one does that too – if a truck trips the height sensors, a big flashing stop sign with “over height must turn” lights up at the last intersection before the bridge, where there’s a chance to turn, the trucks that hit have all seen and ignored a big flashing red illuminated message addressed specifically to them
You’d think it’d get old after awhile but it never does.
You would think Penske, Budget and Enterprise alone would pay to have this improved!
Figured there must be a rental truck office nearby. Actually diabolical, really, but a great way to upsell the optional damage insurance.
I lived in a small town that had a 12’6″ bridge on a main East/West road. There was signage like crazy that it was not a shipping lane and to use the bypass they built specifically around the bridge…and yet people hit it all the time. They painted teeth on the bridge and put up cheeky signs saying the bridge will “eat” your tall vehicle, but to no avail. I watched a 53′ semi trailer scrape about 45′ of the roof off before the driver noticed and stopped – creating a problem of getting the trailer out now that momentum was no longer helping. They eventually passed a city ordinance that striking the bridge was a $10,000 fine and put that on a few signs. Magically, the number of trucks hitting the bridge dropped from one per week to only a single hit in the last year I lived there.