When Overheight Vehicles and Low Bridges Don’t Mix
This U-Haul truck could not pass through the 9-foot clearance of this bridge in Seattle. Michael Grass / RouteFifty.com
Even when there are numerous warnings, driving headlong into danger can be difficult for some to avoid.
SEATTLE — Here’s a good reminder that despite all good efforts by a transportation authority to alert car and truck drivers to potential roadway hazards, humans are, well, humans.
Warning signs sometimes may just go unheeded. That was apparently the case here in the Emerald City this weekend along a scenic route through the Washington Park Arboretum when somebody drove a U-Haul moving van into a low-clearance pedestrian bridge along Lake Washington Boulevard, as first noted by Q13Fox’s Travis Mayfield .
Since this location is a block from my current home, I swung by on Saturday afternoon. It’s not clear at this point what led up to this crash, but as you can see from this photos, the damage to the U-Haul van isn’t pretty.
It reminded me of the infamous 11foot8 bridge in Durham, North Carolina, which has been well documented in a series of YouTube videos . (I checked out that bridge back in 2014.)
The Washington Park Arboretum footbridge is Seattle’s version of the 11foot8 bridge, except in the case of this this brick and concrete structure built in 1911 to carry a sewage pipe and a footpath above Lake Washington Boulevard, the clearance here is just 9 feet.
Not surprisingly, this structure has been hit numerous times over the years, despite the posted warning signs, including flashing lights triggered when an overheight vehicle is approaching.
The most serious incident in recent years was in 2008, when an overheight bus carrying a Seattle high school softball team crashed into the bridge, resulting in non-fatal injuries. The driver of the bus said that he was following his GPS device’s directions , which was set in a bus-specific mode. But the data feeding that device’s navigation apparently didn’t include the Lake Washington Boulevard bridge hazard, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported at the time.
Overheight trucks and buses have been a particular problem in New York state , especially along some parkways with bridges not designed to accommodate buses and trucks.
In September 2010, four Megabus passengers were killed when a double-decker bus crashed into a low-clearance railroad bridge along the Onondaga Lake Parkway in Syracuse. The driver, according to The Post Standard , had testified that he had been using a personal GPS device instead of one provided by Megabus that would have factored in low-clearance bridge hazards.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration has deployed new overheight alert signs at vulnerable spots, as Route Fifty reported last year.
Back at the 11foot8 bridge in Durham, North Carolina, a new safety warning system was activated in May, which includes a set of traffic signals and a new LED light displaying an overheight warning message.
But despite that new warning, old habits die hard, no matter how many signs, flashing lights and warning messages are there to reduce risk.
Spoiler alert for this 11foot8 video posted last week: “ Very hungry canopener bridge defeats fancy, new warning system .”
Michael Grass is Executive Editor of Government Executive’s Route Fifty and is based in Seattle.
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