IAIS - Harrison Street Overpass

"Truck drivers should know their vehicle height or not be driving."

That's not realistic. Look, do you want to save your bridges or not. If you want to deal with reality then put a template in front of the overpass so any high loads will harmlessly hit IT instead of the bridge. Why would you even resist such a suggestion? Nobody is insulting you personally...this is a nameless posting, so ...what's it to you? Why even resist such a practical suggestion?

I was working on a house about 2 blocks up from the bridge when I heard it "snack" on a truck. Sure enough, there was a college kid in a rental truck, with the roof peeled back,

He was letting the air out of the tires in an attempt to get clearance to push the rest of the way thru.

I sugested he he back up, get a truck from a different company, and hoped he got the extra insurance ( he said he did).

The kid whips out his cell, makes a few calls, and comes back to me. "Next time, I get the new truck BEFORE I report the accident! The rental place called around and now I've been blackballed"

It was all I could do not to laugh!!!

I still think the teeth and hash marks is a good idea. Truckers may pay attention then. Most of the time its college kids using moving trucks though.

Hm. Maybe gps needs a trucker app. Drivers could enter their truck height and load weight and gps would avoid sending them through low-clearance, low-weight bridges. Maybe too-narrow ones as well.

I live on a residential street that ends with a one lane, low clearance tunnel. There is not a day that doesn't go by without some moron driving a big-rig going down our street, ignoring the No Trucks and Low Clearance signs, until he gets to the tunnel and has to back all the way out though the neighborhood since there is no place to turn around. We often stop them to ask if they didn't see the warning signs. We always get one of two excuses: One is "No sign is gonna tell me where I can go! I can do whatever I want!" but the second one is more common: "Mah GPS said this wuz the short cut to the lumber milll... heyuck." To which I usually reply "Since when does a GPS trump warning signs?"

Truck drivers should know their vehicle height or not be driving.

It does NO good to post the height of the bridge if the truck driver doesn't know how tall his TRUCK is. What they should do is put a "template" in front of the bridge that is the exact same height as the actual bridge. It would be far enough away that the driver could stop before hitting the bridge if he hits the template first. Of course, if he fits under the template he fits under the actual bridge. They could even use hanging rods or whatever that would harmlessly scrape the top of the truck enough to alert the driver but do no damage.

This is the other "Truck Eating Bridge," but the Brady Street one gets hit more often than this one.