- Joined
- Feb 9, 2011
- Messages
- 19,980
- Reaction score
- 7,363
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Libertarian
IF the truck , which sounds like it was loaded to exceed 80,000 pounds, which is the wieght limit or use to be the limit on a over the road haul, HIT the girder, IT IS THE TRUCK DRIVERS FAULT.
No one elses.
The claims of crumbling infrastructure are a bit premature, unless any of you have degrees in structural engineering and have access to the data on this specific bridge.
Not necessarily. First off, while the 80K weight limit is still in effect, that applies to vehicles in general. Just as you can get special permits for oversized loads so can there be permits for over weight loads. Given that this truck had an escort, then likely it had those permits. So the weight is not the driver's fault.
The next question I have is the height of the load vs the clearance of he bridge. While I'm not applying this to the collapsed bridge, I've seen where the posted clearance is higher than the actual physical clearance. There is a video on youtube somewhere (I'll link if I find it) where trucks are hitting a bridge going under it because the posted clearance says they could make it. The poster notes that the sign is improper. In this specific case, given the location of the hit on the load and the images I can see of the bridge, I have to wonder if there was any settling on the overhead. If so then the driver cannot be at fault since he would have no way of knowing that the outside of the arches were lower than they should have been. He would not have been going across that bridge if he didn't have the clearance. Route planning is part of the permit process.
For the record I am a professional truck driver Class A CDL with over 15 years of experience.
I would expect that the US is no different from here in Canada. Those who use the roads, drivers of personal automobiles and businesses who truck merchandise across the continent, have been paying excessive gasoline taxes, driver and vehicle licensing fees and other charges for decades, presumably to fund regular infrastructure maintenance and for new roads and bridges, etc. Unfortunately, political thieves have stolen that money to fund their own pet projects, social welfare programs, arts grants and other nonsense always saying they could put off the road/infrastructure work for another year. Now we have trillions of dollars of new building and maintenance work to do and no way to fund it.
This is simply another example of past generations saddling the current and future generations with their irresponsible and selfish management of the public's money and facilities. It's shameful.
We've had a real problem here in Maryland with our transportation fund being raided for general use. Then the governor claimed that fees and taxes had to be raised to cover transportation expenses.