Sadly its the 12 foot 4 Bridge now, and its snacks are much lighter.
11 Foot 8 – The Can-opener Bridge
51–60 of 216 posts
Re: 11 Foot 8 – The Can-opener Bridge
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because people are human. They are passing a 4-way intersection. Their wife is angry at them. Their boss is giving them a hard time. Who knows. People are human and they make mistakes all the time. That's why simple, clear signage helps. Why wayfaring is a science. Why packaging is difficult.
> That's why simple, clear signage helps. But the bridge is signed, isn't it?
If it were done well, would there have been 100+ accidents?
Re: 11 Foot 8 – The Can-opener Bridge
#53The Sidney Harbor Tunnel had a similar problem. They came up with an elaborate but successful solution.[1] There are detectors and huge flashing warning signs that light up. Then, there's the last-chance sign. At the entrance to the tunnel, pumps force a curtain of water straight down across the entire roadway. Then a powerful laser system projects a giant octagonal red STOP sign onto the water curtain, filling the entire height of the tunnel opening. That's in addition to the six red traffic lights, flashing red Xs above each lane, and a big STOP with a flashing frame above the tunnel mouth.
That was expensive, but after someone wedged an oversized truck into the tunnel, blocking it for three weeks, it was worth it. Gets tripped about 18 times a year.
Re: 11 Foot 8 – The Can-opener Bridge
#54They ought to make it lower , so it’s most obvious that a truck won’t fit. Make it no more than 2metres, whatever that is in American, so that only cars can go through.
This is America. People have pickup trucks that have been raised to a height above 2m (about 6'6" in American)
And thus the presumably unstoppable forces meets the immovable object.
Re: 11 Foot 8 – The Can-opener Bridge
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That's why simple, clear signage helps. But the bridge is signed, isn't it?
If it were done well, would there have been 100+ accidents?
I guess I don't understand why tall vehicles are approaching a bridge at such speed that they don't have time to react.
It doesn't seem an abnormally low bridge in the first place.
Re: 11 Foot 8 – The Can-opener Bridge
#56So far the best solution I've seen to this sort of thing (other than building a taller bridge) is the waterfall approach. Probably a bit spensie for some rando railroad bridge but it's clever nonetheless. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/video-1008464/Amazing...
I've often seen large gates with hanging chains at the maximal height just before low bridges and tunnels. Wouldn't that also be pretty efficient, reliable and not requiring any maintenance? I suppose having an obstacle spring in front of you would be even more likely to make you stop, but if you're still going when some chains hit the top of your vehicle you deserve to have your license suspended anyway.
The trouble with 11foot8 in particular is that it’s right on the intersection, so through traffic passing by the bridge without going under it would hit the chains as well.
Re: 11 Foot 8 – The Can-opener Bridge
#57So far the best solution I've seen to this sort of thing (other than building a taller bridge) is the waterfall approach. Probably a bit spensie for some rando railroad bridge but it's clever nonetheless. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/video-1008464/Amazing...
I've often seen large gates with hanging chains at the maximal height just before low bridges and tunnels. Wouldn't that also be pretty efficient, reliable and not requiring any maintenance? I suppose having an obstacle spring in front of you would be even more likely to make you stop, but if you're still going when some chains hit the top of your vehicle you deserve to have your license suspended anyway.
The point is not to avoid damaging the trucks, it is to prevent the trucks damaging the bridge behind the barrier.
Re: 11 Foot 8 – The Can-opener Bridge
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely. And then you do it for a couple of hours concentrating on the road and driving the car between the lines nicely widthwise and you'll forget it when you need it most. I've done a lot of driving, some of it boxtrucks and larger and when you switch vehicles it is a thing that you need to remind yourself of constantly . The easiest solution would be to dig that road out to standard depth, the next best would…
> And then you do it for a couple of hours concentrating on the road and driving the car between the lines nicely widthwise and you'll forget it when you need it most. Must be different locations being different. But where I'm from you couldn't remotely just drive regardless of your vehicle height. You'd smash into something within minutes.
Here the right hand lane is up to truck standards and if it isn't it is very clearly marked as such, I wouldn't even know of a road that isn't explicitly closed for trucks that you could not take an 18 wheeler on.
But - and this is the crucial bit - the main distinguishing factor between what is a truck and what counts as a van is different in Europe than in the US/Canada. In the US/Canada on my normal 'lightweight' license I can drive a 10 ton truck, in Europe I'm limited to 3500 KG which puts an automatic limit on the size vehicle, a typical sprinter or boxvan would not be higher than 3.5 meters and everybody else will need a class 'C' driving license at a minimum and once you pass that you shouldn't need to be taught about vehicle height any more. There is a loophole called a BE trailer but those are very rare and the people that drive them tend to know their limitations.
Even so there are plenty of professional drivers in those crash videos that fall for it just the same. I'll give the rental van drivers a pass as long as they cross on the green light and they're only a few inches high. Usually the height of the truck will vary by that much just based on acceleration / deceleration and angle of the 5th wheel hitch if it has one as well as the angle of the road approaching the barrier and the length of the vehicle. If you measure the vehicle while stationary on flat ground you might think you can get away with it when you really can't.
Re: 11 Foot 8 – The Can-opener Bridge
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's answered by the FAQ: http://11foot8.com/11foot8-faq/ > Can’t the road be lowered? > That would be prohibitively expensive because a sewer main runs just a few feet below the road bed. That sewer main also dates back about a hundred years and, again, at the time there were no real standards for minimum clearance for railroad underpasses.
Ah ok, thank you for clarifying that. So that leaves the next best option: remove it from all navigation systems, that way at least the route will be only used by locals familiar with the situation and all other traffic would automatically detour around it.
Alternatively, mark it as a classified military base.
Re: 11 Foot 8 – The Can-opener Bridge
#60Still not high enough. They raised it another 8 inches to make it an even 12ft not too long ago, but evidently that still not enough. One would think they would've looked more closely at the traffic on that road and adjusted it accordingly. It's also really silly to have a sign indicating that too large vehicles must turn, which most drivers won't read/see in time, and practically force them to crash into the bridge,…
> a sign indicating that too large vehicles must turn, which most drivers won't read/see in time When the sign activates, it also causes the traffic light to turn red. In theory, that provides plenty of time to notice and respond to the sign; in practice, collisions still happen because people just run the red light. If someone's sufficiently determined to do something stupid and reckless, there's only so much you ca…
> That's what the big yellow beam is; it was installed to protect the bridge.
Yes, that one protects the bridge - what I'm talking about is a 'warning' bumper, that you can run into, but won't damage the vehicle (as others' comments here have mentioned). It would be put up further up ahead of the bridge itself (not at the bridge). Something like this:
https://www.cisco-eagle.com/catalog/product/157494/garage-lo...