One year later….trucks still crashing into infamous ‘Can-opener Bridge’

hardworkingtrucks.com

Article thanks to Tom Quimby and hardworkingtrucks.com. Links provided:

Some of us at work may deal with jet planes flying overhead, noisy elevators, creaking doors, flickering lights and squeaky copy machines.

Duke University employee Jurgen Henn deals with truck collisions. There’s about one every month near his job at the infamous ‘can-opener bridge’ in Durham, N.C. There was another one this week. It was crash number 112 since Henn began keeping count eight years ago, not long after he began working inside an office building that overlooks the train trestle.

The crashes have become such a regular spectacle that Henn put up cameras to monitor the bridge and started a website, 11foot8.com to record the action. Hard Working Trucks first reported on Henn and his crash cams about a year ago. And since that time, the trucks keep coming and so do his website views. His latest video, which he posted this week (shown below), had over 10,000 hits within two days.

Henn’s website has become so popular that he even sells pieces of the truck that have been shaved off by the bridge. Some have even been autographed by drivers whose egos take the biggest hit. Henn does not know of anyone who’s ever been seriously injured after striking the bridge. That goes for the crash on Tuesday.

“Heck, the truck that got stuck (Tuesday) might have made it had it been fully loaded and heavier,” Henn told cnet.com. “Those trucks are a good reminder of all the close calls in our life that we don’t even notice, where we just slip by disaster, and we don’t even know it.”

The City of Durham has put up warning signs and even installed a sensor-activated sign that lights up whenever trucks over the height limit draw near. That still won’t stop drivers, though, many of whom Henn says just don’t realize how short the clearance is until it’s too late.

http://www.hardworkingtrucks.com/another-truck-falls-victim