(I have no idea what big penny means.)
The bridge is on S Pennsylvania Ave in Lansing, MI, hence “Penny”. Construction has routed more people through there than normal lately increasing the bridge’s hunger.
If there’s one thing people that rent trucks or RVs never learn, it’s the height of their vehicle (and that yes the flashing overheight lights are in fact for you).
Source: Used to live near there.
…increasing the bridge’s hunger.
Thanks!
They’ll follow Google maps anywhere blindly. Rational thinking is turned off.
That’s how people drove into a lake, under a train, het themselves stuck in too narrow streets, arrive on the wrong country and so on.
This bridge has been stupid low for decades, and it’s a main artery from downtown to the (e hospital and) highway. As of the last time I drove past it, the advance warnings signs didn’t seem adequate to me.
it’s important to know your motorhome’s height, how else are you supposed to get drive-thru food?
Oh shit, I posted a separate comment before I read yours – this is my bridge! Oo
“Fools bridge” from Saint-Petersburg saying hi!
It’s just below the height of the most popular small truck, Gazelle - despite the poster saying: “It’s low, Gazelle doesn’t fit” (in addition to a normal sign), drivers keep checking that.
That bridge needs more 11’8"
I read the site but couldn’t find why the sign says 12’4 if it’s really 11’8"?
Edit: Thanks for all the answers everyone. Now the 11’8"+8" makes so much more sense.
They actually raised it back in 2019.
http://11foot8.com/raising-11foot8/
It didn’t help much, obviously.
IIRC, they didn’t raise it because of the crashes. It’s a privately owned rail line and they don’t care about that because the bridge itself wasn’t being damaged. It needed to be renovated anyway so they raised it to be level with the nearby at-grade crossing while they were at it.
Yeah the bridge itself wasn’t being damaged because they installed a goddamn I-beam in front of it as a crash barrier.
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It was sadly raised due to the high number of crashes
Probably would have helped more to lower the bridge even more 🤣
They won’t because there is an old sewer main that runs underneath and according to the town is prohibitively expensive to reconcile all of that with the bridge lowering.
The rail line won’t increase the height anymore because then it will cause a hump in the train tracks there.
The fact that 22 of those 75 were just this year reinforces my suspicion that drivers have been getting enormously worse recently.
I cycle a lot around my city and no cap I believe that they fucking gift driver licenses in cereal boxes nowadays.
I cannot begin to describe the enormous stupidity one can found on the road.
(And not only drivers, electric scooters are almost worse. At least when I have an accident with them they are the ones who take the worst part).
What are our bets on what forever chemical is our generations leaded gasoline?
Carltonbanksium.
Microplastics!
I haven’t done an actual statistical analysis, but relying on my human over-ability to notice patterns and a tendency to laugh at the 11’8" bridge channel on Youtube (said bridge is located in Durham NC and I’m a lowercase t tarheel through and through), most of the trucks that hit the bridge’s crash barrier are Ryder, Penske or Enterprise box trucks, which are rental vehicles available, for reasons completely beyond my comprehension, to anyone with a Class C driver’s license in the state of North Carolina. Also over-represented are RVs that have their rooftop air conditioners scraped off. The vast majority of drivers that hit the 11’8" bridge are amateurs driving a vehicle significantly larger than they’re used to with an absolute height significantly taller than the roof of the cab.
It’s the very occasional semi truck that leads to the most spectacular, and baffling, crashes. They don’t rent articulated trucks to just anyone over 23 with a credit card.
Or counting has gotten worse
Or counting has gotten better
I love how gnarly the underside of the bridge is. Everyone thinks they’re the exception.
If only there was a conveniently placed security camera nearby that could show us these accidents…
We’ve got one of those in my town. The height is only 10’ 8", and the road makes a V going under the tracks. Long wheelbase trucks might make it through until the front wheels start going up the hill on the other side.
There’s a train bridge like that in my hometown, but it’s directly over the base of a fairly steep hill. Pretty much anything bigger than a work van is likely to hit it, and I’ve seen a couple of box trucks with the top 6 inches or so of their roof peeled back like a half-open can of sardines.
Boston has a whole road that is the physical manifestation of Chaos.
Storrow Drive. Runs along the Charles and is basically the northern border of the city. It has many underpasses, most of which are low enough to munch moving trucks. Every year around late Aug early Sept when college kids are moving in a few trucks get Storrow’d. It’s refered to as The Storrowing. It’s a fun time to need to get around the city.
Honestly Storrow is one of the scariest roads in New England, and I used to drive every day to and from work almost the entire length of Memorial which is on the opposite bank of the Charles which is a NARROW four lane road (2*2), with a speed limit that is both probably too high and completely ignored, on top of being almost eternally congested. How I didn’t see a horrible wreck every day confuses me still.
tl;Dr: Don’t drive in Boston unless your ready for some fun (I love the chaos)
Storrowed beer
Its even worse during Allston Xmas, the city in its infinite wisdom decided that most leases end on the same day. All the schools also have the new semester start right around the same time, and all the new students arrive within that few day window.
Lets paint this picture, the city is in panic mode as the student population makes up ~25% of the population of Boston, and they are all returning for the new semester. They likely have just moved as their old lease is up and their new one starts on the same day. They will take all of their worldly possessions and put them into the back of their friends sedan and drive to their new place, anything that wont fit is left on the curb. The previous tenant of the new place did the exact same thing. They put all the things they care for into their new place and decide which furniture from the previous tenant is good enough and put it back inside. Anything left on the curb by ~4 PM is fair game, and will be disposed of by the city next time the collect trash
The freshmen, whos parents are sending their spawn to MIT or BU have a u-haul (that they dont know the height of) carrying all their worldly possions, dispite their tiny dorm not having the room for it (and being told this repeatedly by the school). All it takes is one of these muppets to not pay attention and one of the major arteries into the city is blocked. Traffic will back up for miles, non-masshole drivers operating things that should require a CDL are trying to take short-cuts navigating the narrow boston city roads in small box trucks and every residential street will be a mass of double parked cars as the city collectivly shuffles the entire student population in a day.
Chaos is an understatement (its a lot of fun to watch).
Funny but also fucked up.
Wasn’t it during the Bush or Obama years we got failing grades nationally on bridge infrastructure?
We have done fuck all to fix those bridges in the years since.
Soon, Penny will munch its last truck and the driver will go with it as Penny collapses down on them both.
Just look at how absolutely fucked the side of that bridge is. I’d be praying to every conceivable god anytime I had to go over or under it.
For the record, it’s not factual that nothing is being done about poor bridge conditions. Just one example is the North Washington St. bridge in Boston.
But, I’m sure you’ll reply that “one bridge” doesn’t count.
https://www.mass.gov/north-washington-street-bridge-replacement
https://youtu.be/7pO39Sh6THg?si=BmOcfhOKk0jzjwxS
This video is really hilarious. Idk if it’s the same bridge or not. Also I know people on Lemmy don’t like links to YouTube but I don’t know how to do the thing.
Yeah I’m pretty sure it’s the same bridge. It’s kinda internet famous. They raised the bridge a little since that video, but it still peels the tops off of trucks.
I don’t think it is right? The environment looks completely different and the one in the post is 12", which the 11"8 (or now 12"4) never was.
Correct, this is not the same bridge
No they are not the same bridge. Notice one is 12’ 0’’ and the other is the famous 11’8’’ now the 12’4’’
That’s 11’8", probably the most famous can opener there is. Although they recently raised the bridge height to make it line up better or something, which resulted in it becoming 12’4". It’s still opens a few cans sometimes though.
The problem is using feet to measure it. Whose feet? What size? Shoed or bare? So many possibilities involving feet, there’s no real way of crossing under this safely.
Big Penny’s feet, obviously.
(I have no idea what big penny means.)
It’s a reference to how expensive it will be to repair the trucks.
A city I used to live in had a bridge like this in a major inner-city commercial area just outside the CBD. Would cause havoc for commuters because the bridge was for the southern train lines entering the CBD and was on a busy road entering an major arterial.
All the traffic got held up and diverted, the trains couldn’t run until engineers inspected the bridge.
Yeah, I thought how frustrating that must be for the people who live there if that road is blocked time and time again because of the same thing.
So what’s the signage before trucks can no longer turn around?
It does seem more effective to place some other form of markers like metal poles down up higher with bells hanging on fishing line or some shit, if you hit the bells, you’d hit the bridge. Place them 50 yards before the bridge
That’s how it’s done in my country. If you hear the dangly bits scraping on the roof of your truck, you won’t fit.
Reminds me of a bridge that the road passing under got resurfaced and raised a few inches but the signs never got changed. After a truck got stuck, at least they fixed the sign.
