(I have no idea what big penny means.)
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 the 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.
This looks like they want this stat to increase. No warning colors or symbolic signs of danger. But they have a probd counter for their trap.
You don’t see the big ol flashing hazard lights directly below the googly eyes?
Iirc, this bridge has a ton of signs, signal lights, and indicators leading up to it- they’re just farther out, so you can actually turn away from it BEFORE you’re committed to going under it, or stopping dead in the street.
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"?
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.
They raised the bridge a handful of years back due to all the crashes.
Didn’t stop the crashes.
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 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.
Oh shit, I posted a separate comment before I read yours – this is my bridge! Oo
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.
…increasing the bridge’s hunger.
it’s important to know your motorhome’s height, how else are you supposed to get drive-thru food?
Thanks!
It’s probably the local name for the monster.
I love how gnarly the underside of the bridge is. Everyone thinks they’re the exception.
Drivers are going hit hit that bridge while trying to figure out wtf that sign means.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable for someone not super experienced in truck driving to assume the vehicle will be able to drive on most roads. I feel like there’s a lot of “Person blindsided by uncommon hazard gets laughed at” around.
It’s also not unreasonable to expect responsibility from people who regularly handle vehicles of several tons to know how to drive.
America has this weird aversion to critcizing drivers.
Most of these places have numerous warnings to trucks to turn back. Anyone looking at several warnings and continuing on, or worse too distracted to notice, sorta deserves the chiding.
That bridge 11’ 8" that always gets posted, has an over height sensor that stops the light to red, a sign warning you that you are over height, hazard lights, and the height bar is in bright yellow. People still hit it regularly.
That’s why bridges have the hight written on it.
I think it is resonable to expect someone to inform themselves about the hight of the vehicle, especially if they are not experienced in truck driving.
If you are not experienced and do not inform yourself that’s just careless.
I am not super experience in truck driving, but I think the reasonable (and rational) thing if I am driving a big truck, is to not take a chance and go under that if I don’t know how tall the truck is.
This is a defense that nobody needs or asked for. If you don’t understand the very, very simple concept of clearance you shouldn’t be driving a vehicle and especially not a truck.
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.
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)
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).
Storrowed beer
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.
Was this photo taken some time around 2007 or did something change that made this year so bad?
That’s the current total. There’s road work routing more people through there at the moment, but there kind of always is. Penny’s also getting a lot more attention now, so the historical numbers may be underreported
(I have no idea what big penny means.)
It’s a reference to how expensive it will be to repair the trucks.
Bayswater Bridge RIP
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayswater_SubwaySign bad.
2275 trucks munched this year since 2004?
I mean, if you’re making a conscious effort to read that totally wrong…. yeah, that’s what it says.
