Three things in life are certain: Death, Taxes and people in rental trucks hitting the 11-foot-8-inch railroad bridge in Durham, NC. Last month, two crashes happened in the same week, with surprisingly similar circumstances.
First, if you aren’t familiar with the 11foot8 bridge, or “Canopener” bridge you need to figure out what you’re doing with your life and time on the internet. For the uninitiated, it’s an 11-foot, 8-inch high railroad bridge running right through a busy intersection. The intersection experiences crashes so often that a man named Jürgen Henn pointed a camera from his nearby office at the road to catch all of the pure truck crashing hilarity.
On Feburary 24, Henn uploaded two videos of two separate incidents of pedestrians barely avoiding falling debris from trucks smashing into the bridge. These are crashes number 143 and 142 since Henn started filming the intersection in 2008.
Of course, both trucks ignored both the large illuminated warning sign, and the traffic signals turning red, both preventive measures the city installed to try and stem the tide of trucks crashing into this hungry low-ass bridge.
Henn noted that crash 143 was so wedged under the bridge that it took several hours for a tow truck to pry it out during the lunchtime rush hour. Durham has attempted to do everything from keeping this hungry overhang from claiming its next truck rental security deposit. However, short of rerouting existing rail lines, it’s almost certain to bite again.