News Bridge collapses in Washington state

[Evo]

According to local radio, when the state gives clearance it just means "You have permission to drive that oversize vehicle on our roads." It's ultimately the driver's responsibility to determine a safe route. As I pointed out in an earlier post, he was too close to his pilot car to do anything after he (presumably) saw the safety antenna hit the girder. A simple lane change would have avoided the hazard.

I read that he couldn't change lanes because another truck had blocked him.

The larger trucking companies have people that do the routes and authorizations for the drivers, so it wouldn't have been up to the driver to determine.

 

[jim hardy]

it hit the corner. Poor guy sure needed to be just a little further over...


source: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2013/05/24/2609664/skagit-river-bridge-collapse.html

 

[mheslep]

...

I like designs where rather than hold Mother Nature at bay, the engineers enlist her aid.

+1. Or, at least use a redundant design when going against.

 

[aquitaine]

Understood, yes, the stimulus funds for infrastructure were in general not used for heavy infrastructure projects. One reason is that the money was supposed to be spent quickly, and there really aren't many unfunded "shovel ready" projects. It takes years and costs millions of dollars to design a bridge and it isn't like there are a stack of designed and approved bridge plans laying around ready to execute.

So much of the funding was spent on easy to execute maintenance things such as re-paving roads that didn't really need to be repaved (I saw several in my area).

That wasn't really my point though; my point was just that are issues aren't because of the recent economic issues, they are because of long-term "neglect". (I put "neglect" in quotes because I think the problems while worthy of attention are somewhat overblown.)

I think a big part of the problem is that too often infrastructure spending itself is viewed through the lens of short term stimulus and pork barrel pet projects, when in reality it's just basic stuff that generally needs to be maintained regularly and after a while rebuilt. So we end up with the kind of waste you describe that largely doesn't address the core problems while our bridges collapse.

 

[jim hardy]

I think a big part of the problem is that too often infrastructure spending itself is viewed through the lens of short term stimulus and pork barrel pet projects, when in reality it's just basic stuff that generally needs to be maintained regularly and after a while rebuilt. So we end up with the kind of waste you describe that largely doesn't address the core problems while our bridges collapse.

We build in 'core problems' by choosing what's cheapest to build now instead of picking lowest "Life Cycle Cost" .

A thousand years from now they might use that concrete bridge in another Volkswagen commercial.

(picture courtesy of http://www.popsci.com/cars/article/2002-02/round-reason)

Core problem is our "Throw-Away" mentality, imho. It's incompatible with maintenance.

 

[OmCheeto]

Core problem is our "Throw-Away" mentality, imho. It's incompatible with maintenance.

Bah! The core problem is not enough workers who know how to handle a hot glue guns.

Cracks in Sellwood Bridge fixed … with glue

Ref

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hmmmm... I wonder if it's possible to preemptively ban me from bridge related threads?