(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.
it’s important to know your motorhome’s height, how else are you supposed to get drive-thru food?
…increasing the bridge’s hunger.
“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.
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.
They actually raised it back in 2019.
http://11foot8.com/raising-11foot8/
It didn’t help much, obviously.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
