Trucks vs railroad bridge; Bridge wins!

JCitron

Trainzing since 12-2003
https://youtu.be/xzkWTcDZFH0

According to regulations, the person driving the truck is supposed to know the height of their vehicles, however, they seem to forget often and get stuck under the bridge deck or rip the top off the top of the trucks. I do feel bad for the caravan driver though...

There's one particular bridge located about 60 miles west from where I live in Westwood, MA that gets hit quite often, so often in fact that there's a police camera up at that intersection to catch the action.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsbsOpM84o3W0q6KIw1XL2g

This bridge is quite low too at 10' 8" - about 3.25 meters. Most bridges around my area are quite a bit taller at 13.5 feet or around 4 meters, which clears most vehicles.

Where this bridge is located, there are warning signs placed long before the bridge stating trucks must turn left and then another pole-mounted sign with the same, but the drivers zoom headlong and remove the tops of their box trucks. Everything from lobsters to paper have been laid out on the road because of this. This particular bridge will be replaced sometime soon, according to the MBTA who owns the line now. At one time this was the famous Boston and Albany and eventually became the CSX mainline between Boston and the west. It used to be 4-tracks back in its heyday and was reduced to 2 active tracks and two empty decks back in the 1950s and early 60s.

John
 
I love that bridge ... all vehicles should be lowered to its standard height ... a never ending source of entertainment !

Try to explain that one to the boss ... NEXT ... job applicant, please step into the office !

Can you read English ? Y/N ?
 
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I nominate the people in those videos for the World Stupidity Awards.
https://web.archive.org/web/2012021...upidityawards.com/World_Stupidity_Awards.html

I remember this website. Unfortunately your url doesn't work.

It's more than that Jordon, though part of the issue. The drivers don't think just like people who cut off big rigs on the highways and zoom through rail crossings. They're so busy concentrating on getting from point-A to point-B while talking on their mobile phones and playing with anything else in their vehicles, that they don't pay attention to the route they're driving.

John
 
I wonder if something similar every happened with a train.

After all double stacks and hi-cubes are taller then older freight cars and a lot of bridges were not built to double stack and hi-cube specs.

The dispatcher should keep track of this of course but not all idiots drive tricks - some drive items with trucks.:hehe:

Ben
 
I wonder if something similar every happened with a train.

After all double stacks and hi-cubes are taller then older freight cars and a lot of bridges were not built to double stack and hi-cube specs.

The dispatcher should keep track of this of course but not all idiots drive tricks - some drive items with trucks.:hehe:

Ben

It sure did...

Back about 35 years ago on the Boston Maine Railroad, they instituted some piggyback service. The first train on the New Hampshire mainline, hit a bridge on the Woburn and Wilmington town line. The bridge at New Boston Street has remained out of service since.

John
 
That must have been a real mess. Did it drop the bridge (in the water)?

Can you imagine trying to explain that to your insurance carrier?:hehe:

Ben
 
Here's a nearby example of low-clearance bridges, facing north. Obviously it is clearly marked, and I know of at least one even when a cube truck got stuck trying to go under the tracks. The yellow dot on the bridge is one of two flashing lights with a sign obviously showing the height clearance for vehicles going under the tracks. If you turn the camera to the right, this is State Spur Road 151, which leads up into Tennessee, following the CSX mainline for a distance northwards. It also passes by a monument marking where the General rolled to a stop during The Great Locomotive Chase.

Bridge:
https://www.google.com/maps/@34.9144705,-85.1066354,3a,75y,270h,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1szgpHAcuX3O9ZbpFR3KDETw!2e0!7i3328!8i1664

And just north on State Spur Road 151, there is a caboose and two crew cars sitting in an open area. If you look between the bush and row of trees, you can barely see the grey crew car:

https://www.google.com/maps/@34.9160539,-85.1061139,3a,75y,90h,92.04t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1srMn6AWxCVHugqCOwmXE1sw!2e0!7i3328!8i1664

And here's the marker, marking where The General rolled to a stop.
https://www.google.com/maps/@34.9417424,-85.1041351,3a,75y,270h,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s-jJCT8MUW8QS-qw7Y20VSg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
 
Speaking of double stacks - those things have always looked a bit top heavy to me. Wonder how many have simply tipped over when taking a curve a little to fast?

Ben
 
With respect to clearances of railroad equipment, one of the functions of the Official Railway Equipment Register is to publish for everyone who needs to know the specific clearance diagram which applies to every listed car. This diagram is referred to by a letter (or in a few cases, letters), and is painted on the side of the rail car in a box or circle. The diagrams are referred to as "plates". Plate "A" is obsolete, and no longer in current use. Plate "B" is the designation for unrestricted interchange, and applies to a car unless it is otherwise marked. Technically, the plate refers to the cross sectional area of the car, with allowances for car length. So a car that is 41 feet long can up to 10 feet 8 inches wide, and be with in Plate B specifications, but for a 75 foot long car to comply with plate B standards, it can only be 8 foot 4 inches wide. Rail cars built to other plates (C, E, and F) have similar profiles, but differ in the allowable heights above the rails. Double Stack cars are built to plate H or H1. Images of the diagrams of the various plates can be found by searching on your favorite image web search engine.

While the occasional accident does happen due to other factors, such as detours, by an large the railroads pay fairly close attention to the heights of cars operated, and it is not common to find a railr car operated on a line that has insufficient clearance. I would expect that these days, the information processing systems for the various railroads does a check on all cars at the point of origin, and automatically flags cars which are routed over lines where they will not clear. Further, the shippers of large items (think mining equipment shipped in parts for assembly on site) have people in the transportation department, and the railroads have people in an office in the operating department whose jobs it is to prevent these kinds of accident. On dimensional shipments where the shipment might come close to or exceed plate H, the routes are carefully selected to avoid any clearance problems. And frankly, these issues are addressed long before the proposed equipment is loaded on the rail car. When the company gets an order for a new piece of custom equipment, the delivery route is picked, and the dimensions are specified accordingly in the design stage, before the first piece of material has been selected, much less cut.

ns
 
Thanks for the info on the plate designations.

Here's the location of the bridge that got taken out.

http://binged.it/1oOdUpn

I worked in the grey building on the top where all those cars are in that parking lot long after the bridge was gone. When I was there, I'd sit up on the bridge abutments and eat my lunch and watch the freight trains. The towns had put cement Jersey barriers across the road to keep the local kids from playing daredevil and attempting to jump the gap.

The rail line shown is one of the oldest in the US and was built in the early 1830s by the Boston and Lowell. There were many bridges along this line that were raised to handle the piggyback and stack traffic, but apparently this one wasn't or maybe wasn't raised enough.

John
 
Hi everybody.
I can only advise on any situation in the United Kingdom regard to road accidents of this type involving heavy goods vehicles. Having worked for many years in road transport safety I have often been involved in advising employers wishing to take action against their drivers following accidents of this type.

In regard to the box van vehicle in the opening posters video, then there would be no excuse for that accident occurring here in the UK as all rigid heavy goods box type vehicles have the height of the vehicle clearly displayed in the driver’s cab and therefore there can be no excuse whatsoever for colliding with a bridge lower than the vehicle.

However, with articulated vehicles pulling semitrailers the situation can be very different and sometimes somewhat confusing for the driver. Most box or curtain side trailers have their height clearly displayed on the front of the vehicle but that height measurement is taken when the trailer is on its landing legs adjusted to equal height of the rear axles. On connecting up to a drive unit the trailer is lifted off its landing legs as it rides up over the fifth wheel coupling thereby raising the overall height of the trailer by the height of coupling which can mean and added height of more than half a meter (1 ½ feet).

In the above, there is no standard height for fifth wheel couplings as that is set by the carrying capacity of the drive unit and also the vehicle manufacturers design. A class I LGV driver (formerly known as HGV drivers) very often during the course of a working shift may pickup and drop-off several different trailers all of which may be of different height bringing about the need to re-calculate the height of the vehicle at each change.

By example, In the case of a night trunk driver that person may well have a different drive unit given to them at the start of each night shift as it is very often the case of whatever is available. Therefore, the height of the fifth wheel coupling will change with each different vehicle and the driver during the course of his night trunking duties will change trailers several times and each trailer may have a different height, (everyone still following). You then have the position of the driver continuously re-calculating the overall ride height of the vehicle during the course of the journey.

Most experienced LGV drivers do very well in the above (as they are not stupid as stated by one poster in this thread). However, problems can occur and accidents happen when a driver’s planed journey is suddenly changed by road congestion or blockages and they then have to divert onto alternate routes. It is then that low bridges can mean an inches or centimetres difference in passing safely under or not. It is again then when a miscalculation on the ride height can mean disaster.

However, when an employer considers taking disciplinary action against a LGV driver following such an accident all the above has to be taken into account.

So, it is not that simple. Anyone wish to have a go? We are 60,000 truck drivers short here in the UK with things such as the above being very much part of the reason why.

Bill
 
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No thanks Bill, I'll pass on the job offer as an LGV driver. :)

Back to the topic...

Over here it is the driver's responsibility to know the height of his vehicle and is responsible for the accident he has caused. In most cases, the company's insurance company will pick up the tab for the damages, and the driver will face the consequences for causing the damage.

In the Westwood Police video cam footage, there is a small sign placed on the pole quite a distance from the intersection notifying truck drivers to take the left before the bridge. Since I live in this particular state, albeit, 60 miles north, this is probably one of many signs that has a warning on it stating that there is a low bridge ahead. As we can see in this video, the drivers blatantly ignore the signs and blast through as though the bridge doesn't exist.

The problem, I think and we've discussed before, is the driver becomes numb to his surroundings and is busily focused on making the delivery or traveling, and probably doing other things too like using a mobile phone which is sadly allowed here while driving. Since he's not paying attention to the details, he misses the sign and blasts along as though nothing is amiss and gets stuck.

Not related to getting stuck, but important to note and watch as well, is another driver in a Toyota Camry which is not paying attention to the narrower bridge, hits the curbing and bounces head-on into an oncoming car. From the video, it appears no one is injured, however. From my observations, the Camry driver was probably busy doing something else and not paying attention. He was probably sited by the police and fined for not driving with due care and received the allotted insurance stepping points, which will raise his rates higher. If he receives three infractions total he will have to attend a driver education classes, pay out of pocket for these, and have the points on his insurance for 7 years.

John
 
Hi everybody.
Here in the UK using a mobile phone while driving a car incures a three point penalty on your driving licence and a £60 fine which is not enough in my view. However, with an LGV driver that penalty is increased to a maximum of £600 and six penalty points on your driving licence which is halfway towards being banned.

If the offence of using a mobile phone takes place near a sign posted school, hospital or old people’s residential home etc then the LGV driver faces the prospect after the court verdict of having to further appear in front of the regional traffic Commissioner. He/she can then at that hearing revoke the LGV driving qualification of the offenders licence for a period of between four and eight weeks on average. The above are very heavy penances but unfortunately you still see drivers of LGV vehicles in the UK using their phones while driving but it is reducing as these new penalties and court cases are publicised.

As you state in your posting John, the insurance companies usually pick up the tab for the damage to vehicles and bridges. But then it is very often the employer’s insurance company who insist on disciplinary action being carried out against the driver under threat to the employer of their insurance been removed or much higher premium payments having to be made.

In the above circumstances it is very often that my company has been called in by the employer and the insurance company to look at the circumstances of the accident and then act as independent broker in recommending the level of disciplinary penalty or not as a solution to both parties.

I have very often found myself in some “very interesting” arguments with stripe suited insurance company loss adjusters who have never made a mistake while driving a car in their lives (LOL).

I will say no more other than there are some hilarious tales I could tell in regard to some of these cases I have been involved with over the years by way of what drivers have stated, insurance companies have expected and employers have tried to get away with.
Bill
 
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