andrewducker | (Reply)

From:

Sort of re #4:
It is only days ago that I contemplated divesting myself of somewhere between two and three linear feet of folded maps. It has been over two decades since I worked in the transportation industry. For a while, I did rural residential delivery. It used to be that I stopped at the city hall or the police station in most towns that were new to me to get a local map because it was the only way to find many of the smaller roads.

I was never in a truck that hit a bridge -- a gate, once -- but I did have to pay a little bit of attention, once in a while. There are other considerations than straight height that the link doesn't talk about. The shape of the underside of the bridge is relatively obvious. The shape of the road (hill or camber) that passes beneath and the length of the truck wheel base can combine to make a significant difference and make it much harder to see the danger.

I'm also reminded of an incident that didn't involve the top of a truck but came relatively close to killing me. I was walking under the bridge, here, when a truck took the corner too tightly, above and brushed the railing, knocking one bar out of its mooring. The bar passed before my eyes and struck the walkway, vertically, a couple of feet in front of me and then toppled into the road. I cleared the bar from the way and then climbed the embankment to spot for the driver to disentangle and clear the path. It made me late for work.