I just started a thread in Dec about a similar accident in Miami.
These low bridges seem like a very bad idea to me.
Here’s the Boston story. 34 injured this time. Sure hope the injuries aren’t serious.
Just used Street View to scope out the intersection, and if the bus hit the bridge I think it did, it had to drive through bigass LOW CLEARANCE - CAR ONLY signs hung across the road at the height of the bridge.
Of course where possible low bridges should be avoided, but drivers need to bear some responsibility to not be complete idiots. Low clearance signage is well regulated, and sometimes it just isn’t feasible to have 14’ clearance.
As a person who has personally crashed a box truck into a low bridge, I agree that the responsibility lies with the driver to know how tall the vehicle is and how tall the bridge is. All bridges under 15’ or 16’ or something are marked in this country. A person with a CDL should know this.
Gorsnak, thx for the link. Those two low-hanging signs stating “cars only” provide a good safeguard as it looks like one of those signs is busted in half, like it was struck by a vehicle that was too tall. I am curious if it was the same vehicle that broke that sign, assuming it is not a ‘stitch’ of artifact in the imagery-software. There is really no way for an over-tall vehicle to NOT see or feel those signs.
The signs also are accompanied by another adjacent warning sign that states “trucks and buses exit here”. Only way I can see of missing such things is roadway-hypnosis or whatever, and there is no excuse for that as far as I am concerned.
I’m pretty sure the people who build bridges agree with you, actually. Unfortunately there aren’t magic bridge embiggeners that can retrofit a higher bridge into places like this for free with no disruption.
I’m not sure that’s the right spot. Western Ave. crosses Soldiers Field again about a mile or two downstream. They’d have had to pass the same sort of signs there, though. (I haven’t checked all possible access from all directions.) And that’s assuming the signs were hung at the right height and haven’t been taken down for repairs since the Google Maps car drove by.
I thought the problem was too-tall vehicles, not low bridges.
It’s amazing how many people miss such obvious warnings (this bridge even has a sign that flashes lights if you are too high).
Ah, I think you may be right that it’s the bridge to the east. It looks to me like the whole road is car only due to height restrictions in that area. Western Ave isn’t the only road it crosses with a low clearance bridge, and all the entrances to Soldiers Field that I could see had the hanging signs (which I’d be astonished if had been “taken down for repairs” but not astonished if missing because dipshit ripped one down with an overheight vehicle.
I saw a truck once that had passed the sign (must have got on Soldiers Field at Cambridge St.) but wised up before the bridge (the railroad bridge near BU). The trouble is, there’s no other way out. The state patrol had to stop traffic back at Cambridge St. so the truck could back up a half-mile to get out. I was on the bike path at the time and breezed right past it all. (And it was still less of a hassle than it would have been if the guy had hit the bridge, I’m sure.)
I’m not sure the height restriction is the only thing going on. I seem to remember hearing somewhere that roads through certain greenbelts around Boston are under different jurisdiction, possibly DCR (Department of Conservation and Recreation). I take Fresh Pond Parkway, Alewife Brook Parkway, and Mystic Valley Parkway occasionally, and I’ve seen “no trucks” signs on stretches of those that have no bridges. The lanes seem narrower than other streets, but I’m not going out there with a ruler to measure it.
I don’t know if it’s a regulatory oddity, a quality-of-life issue, or just pragmatism. I wouldn’t be surprised if those greenbelts were some of the first arterials into Boston, and they may have been built to a standard when vehicles were smaller and they can’t safely handle full-size, modern trucks.
Went by the accident last night. Prediction: the driver doesn’t speak/read English.
I don’t know about Boston, but I believe that some of the parkways around NYC were built with low bridges specifically to exclude large trucks.
Some said it was to exclude city people from easy bus access to Jones Beach. They were designed to exclude commercial traffic with low arched stone bridges and deliberate curves to make for a more leisurely and picturesque drive. I remember the speed limit as lower than the current 55. A section of the Southern State Parkway has earned the sobriquet Blood Alley…