A Truck, An Idiot, And A Bridge.

This is a take from an earlier entry, but folks, it has happened AGAIN.

Yup. another dang blasted IDIOT has smoked the overhead Davenport bridge. And lost.

I wrote a story on this the first time it happened after the repair work was done and updated it the second time round. I'll just repost it and save you the trouble of trying to find the entry again.

There is a bridge that goes past the paper mill in Rhinelander. It has seen many accidents in its time; so much that it was legendary among city residents.

Six months ago, the railroad company and the federal transportation guys decided after yet another accident involving semis and this bridge, that they would fix it, as it was now deemed to be unsafe.

So they reinforced it with steel beams. They painted it with stripes. They put up signs every 5 feet. They even decorated it with little flashing lights.

When it was all finished, we citizens thought, “Yes. This bridge is perfect. No one will ever hit it again, not with stripes and lights and signs aplenty…”

But ah, just yesterday, August 16th, 2006, somebody did. Somebody hit the bridge that was supposed to be un-hittable. How the semi driver blew through the signs, the stripes, AND the flashing lights…well, the spokesman said it must have been negligence.

The bridge survived the smack, but one of the little flashing lights was broken. The steel beams were a little scratched.

One can only wonder what happens to the semi driver from here: laughed at by city officials and railroad technicians because how in heaven’s name could he have hit THAT bridge, the one decorated with doodads to prevent exactly this kind of accident occurring. His boss laughing him right out to the Unemployment office, because any boss who’d let him drive after this is insane. And everyone in the city of Rhinelander laughing at him because boy, he must have been missing a few bolts in HIS bridge…

Personally, I wouldn’t let this guy drive a go-kart. How BLIND would you have to be to knock into the one bridge in Rhinelander that was recently made impossible to hit?

Apparently, I underestimated the idiocy of truck drivers going through Rhinelander, because it's happened AGAIN. 4 days ago, some genius trucker hit the bridge.

Oct 8th, 2008: Dumbass Number 3 went under the bridge, of course, and in the paper there's a lovely picture of what used to be a decent looking truck. It now looks like its had a tinfoil explosion out the backside (that would be the roof of the truck, neatly draping down to the ground in a cascade of destructed metal).

The guy supposes he might lose his job. YA THINK?

Some residents propose lowering it. Can't. Trains go through there to the paper mill, and the fact that the street is probably inches above the water line that close to the river (which IS about 100 feet away) would mean you can't lower the sucker anyway or risk having it underwater. You can't close it down-people on the west side of town use it as a main artery, and anyway, the paper mill's front doors are RIGHT THERE.

And if lowering the darn thing would help, don't you think after 16 accidents happening there that they WOULD HAVE? Lowering it will not stop them smacking into it-it will only give them cause to blaze through there with BIGGER trucks and smoke it again.

Either the truckers are going to have to get smarter or we're going to have to send out memos.

Three accidents in two years. Two this year. It seems the idiocy continues onwards, despite the NTSB's attempts to stop these fools plowing through a bridge that's too low for them.

Ta,
Bec