I hate articles that talk negatively about GPS when they really mean navigation software. GPS allows you to determine where you are. Navigation software tells you where to go.
Two examples: GPS does not spy on you and tracks your every movement. But the navigation software might. GPS doesn’t tell you to go down the wrong road. But the navigation software might. Etc.
My brother-in-law works in the construction business and has a CDL and speaks quite harshly of the quality of tractor trailer drivers in the Binghamton area, particularly on the Rt I-81 corridor. He says a semi gets wedged in the Tompkins Street Bridge about once a month despite prominent warning signs.
There are multiple competitors to GPS, though many receivers will receive signals from all of them.
GPS is the American system, operated by the US Space Force. There are also GLONASS, BeiDou, Galileo, QZSS, and NavIC, operated by Russia, China, the EU, Japan, and India, respectively. Though QZSS and NavIC only have regional coverage.
A similar local example of this is UHaulers moving in for their freshman semester in Boston destroying their truck and backing up traffic for hours by getting themselves onto a road with a low overpass. This overpass strips the roof of the truck, and is referred to as getting Storrowed, named for Storrow Drive, the road they shouldn’t be on.
No amount of signage can remedy this, the only way to fix it would be to raise the overpass, or to have the drivers gps route them more appropriately.
Where I am there's often a sign/bar over the road ahead of the bridge/underpass at the same height as the bridge ("IF YOU HIT THIS SIGN YOU WILL HIT THAT BRIDGE" etc).
Whilst there's not always enough room - I'm sure it would work with the bridges in most of the pictures in that article
Having a gigantic stop sign right in the traffic lane seems to be fairly effective[0] though it's absurd that's the length you have to go to to make people notice.
Google maps and Waze does not allow for setting vehicle height
I bought a Garmin unit for my RV, the special one for RVs costs over $500 that avoids low bridges and allows you to set vehicle height. It doesn’t route near as well as Waze nor does it have as good of traffic info.
Waze with vehicle height id easily pay $20 a month for, provided I could subscribe and unsubscribe for the winter while my RV is parked
It does not look like repairs have even begun on the damage from 2023-02-10 (Knight Street, Cambie Overpass). There is still just a big chunk of concrete missing, with rebar sticking out of it, and the large direction sign which was there has yet to be replaced.
Related, I wish there was a good way for parking garages to advertise their vertical clearances, beyond the headache bar at the entryway.
I was recently invited to a vendor dinner at a nice restaurant in a downtown area with no street parking and I had no transportation option beyond my work truck (clocking in at about 6' 5"). I had to resort to using street view to check the entrances to various parking structures and hope the picture was close enough/the text wasn't too blurry for me to read the warning bar. In the end, it worked! But it was a painful process.
Is installing a steel beam 10-30 feet before the bridge on either side that difficult?
For a layman that seems like a simple fix to deal with drivers who cannot read the signs. Shift the damage away from the bridge.
Does someone in the town administration make loads of money whenever the bridge is hit and a repair contract is handed out to their brother-in-law's firm?
I had wanted to do this as a project, but a truck driver told me they already used special navigation software that took their clearances into consideration. Seems like not all of the drivers do this…
Having spoken before with some logistics folks/route planners for large trucking outfits: Its a tricky problem in that it's hard to keep the clearance data current.
An example I was given was that routine road maintenance might include resurfacing a stretch of the route. If some asphalt wasn't ground out beforehand, that new lift reduces the height from the road surface to the bottom of the bridge by a couple inches. If that was all the margin you had, clang!
Low bridges already include a margin of error in their max height signs. Kind of like how fuel gauges show zero but you can still drive dozens of miles.
There’s a legendary bridge in North Carolina that, fortunately, is not threatened by truck drivers. Rather, it is the threat to improperly driven trucks, and is affectionately known as the “Can Opener”: http://11foot8.com/
I’ve been watching these videos for years and despite adding increasingly prominent warnings and raising the bridge itself eight extra inches, idiots—often in Penske rental trucks—will still drive into the bridge and peel off the top of their box truck.
In other GPS thoughts, I've wondered if Google is responsible for a bunch of the seeming grid lock. In the past I feel like people drove down the main streets but now, when the main street fills, Google Maps, and probably Apple Maps and the rest, redirect cars to streets with less traffic. Those streets then end up pouring cars into the the main streets further down, jamming up the entire system.
I have no data, it's just a thought as I see the grid lock and every small side street full of cars. I see the main streets going super slow as people from the packed side streets push back into the main streets they avoided earlier. That means the main street itself is running 10x slower than it would otherwise, at least toward the start, as each car that enters at the start has to wait for the hundreds of cars merging in from side streets in front of it. Cars that were not doing that from side streets 20 years ago because their GPS maps were not directing them to
I think you're correct. Looking at the simplest form of this:
In traffic jams on motorways google often directs me to come off at a slip road only to immediately rejoin the motorway. These slip roads are fairly empty and thus my journey time improves.
The overall implication to the traffic jam is negative though. Everyone rejoining slows down traffic more than leaving it speeds traffic up.
I live on a dead-end street, which has bike/foot paths connecting its cul-de-sac to a new/wealthier neighborhood.
Any time I see a "much too nice for this neighborhood" vehicle turning around, I know it's because their mapping software gives the impression of this being "a shortcut" (it is not).
This almost happened to me taking a rented U-Haul down the parkways in New York, which have notoriously low overpasses. It was like the 2nd smallest box truck you could rent and I still seem to recall having to pull off to the side of the road and download a trial of some specialty trucker GPS app. This was maybe 5 years ago.
Okay, so I thought I would check this in my "gps" and I see OsmAnd+ from f-droid lets you enter vehicle parameters, including height, and will avoid low overpasses, given the height restriction is tagged in OSM data. You can also enter a type of vehicke and the navigation will avoid roads you shouldn't enter (dangerous load, no entrance for HGV, etc.).
Those drivers should just use a better software.
There's a bridge in Melbourne, Australia, called the Montague St bridge that's so (in)famous it has its own website. The average streak without a strike is currently sitting at 42 days. They've even tried putting up tons of signage and low hanging dangly rattle things that trucks will hit before they get squished under the bridge, but it seems to have little effect.
I honestly wish truck drivers had their very own highway. I hate sharing the road with these beastly vehicles. Especially those super aggressive truck drivers, that ride your butt and pass you when you're doing 80 in a 70.
> “I swear, we could take that bridge out and not replace it and people would go in the river.
Incredibly funny, and also incredibly sad, because it's true. Weren't there cases of people dying from dehydration after being misled in some desert by their GPS?
This is a sad, sad issue of culture and education.
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[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 86.2 ms ] threadTwo examples: GPS does not spy on you and tracks your every movement. But the navigation software might. GPS doesn’t tell you to go down the wrong road. But the navigation software might. Etc.
When GPS is trash talked, nobody understands that to be the satellite system.
And you can trash talk that all you want; it is immune to bad PR because it has no competition.
GPS is the American system, operated by the US Space Force. There are also GLONASS, BeiDou, Galileo, QZSS, and NavIC, operated by Russia, China, the EU, Japan, and India, respectively. Though QZSS and NavIC only have regional coverage.
No amount of signage can remedy this, the only way to fix it would be to raise the overpass, or to have the drivers gps route them more appropriately.
Where I am there's often a sign/bar over the road ahead of the bridge/underpass at the same height as the bridge ("IF YOU HIT THIS SIGN YOU WILL HIT THAT BRIDGE" etc).
Whilst there's not always enough room - I'm sure it would work with the bridges in most of the pictures in that article
Having a gigantic stop sign right in the traffic lane seems to be fairly effective[0] though it's absurd that's the length you have to go to to make people notice.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImU1mG7QC4I
I bought a Garmin unit for my RV, the special one for RVs costs over $500 that avoids low bridges and allows you to set vehicle height. It doesn’t route near as well as Waze nor does it have as good of traffic info. Waze with vehicle height id easily pay $20 a month for, provided I could subscribe and unsubscribe for the winter while my RV is parked
I’ve heard of other RVers who have also used the Hammer navigation app used by truckers.
As a side note, OsmAnd supports setting vehicle height* and has support for multiple vehicles/routing profiles: https://osmand.net
*: and weight, width, and length
https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/transportation/vehicle-sa...
It does not look like repairs have even begun on the damage from 2023-02-10 (Knight Street, Cambie Overpass). There is still just a big chunk of concrete missing, with rebar sticking out of it, and the large direction sign which was there has yet to be replaced.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgjqjrcfYJE
I was recently invited to a vendor dinner at a nice restaurant in a downtown area with no street parking and I had no transportation option beyond my work truck (clocking in at about 6' 5"). I had to resort to using street view to check the entrances to various parking structures and hope the picture was close enough/the text wasn't too blurry for me to read the warning bar. In the end, it worked! But it was a painful process.
threaten -> threatened
Current HN title
> Bridges in the US are threaten by truck drivers relying on GPS meant for cars
For a layman that seems like a simple fix to deal with drivers who cannot read the signs. Shift the damage away from the bridge.
Does someone in the town administration make loads of money whenever the bridge is hit and a repair contract is handed out to their brother-in-law's firm?
People might not stop for warning lights, but a red light?
maybe add a sign under the red light - "your truck is too tall and will be destroyed if you continue"
Any or both of these ideas could be implemented for much less cost than bridge repairs and closures, I feel.
However, there's definitely trucks that ran the red light as well as there's little distance between the light and the bridge.
https://www.youtube.com/@11foot8plus8
An example I was given was that routine road maintenance might include resurfacing a stretch of the route. If some asphalt wasn't ground out beforehand, that new lift reduces the height from the road surface to the bottom of the bridge by a couple inches. If that was all the margin you had, clang!
I’ve been watching these videos for years and despite adding increasingly prominent warnings and raising the bridge itself eight extra inches, idiots—often in Penske rental trucks—will still drive into the bridge and peel off the top of their box truck.
It's a rail bridge and the railroad was just improving the grade and just so happened to need to raise it those 8 inches.
(btw, our cats love those videos on 11foot8.com and can watch them for hours)
I have no data, it's just a thought as I see the grid lock and every small side street full of cars. I see the main streets going super slow as people from the packed side streets push back into the main streets they avoided earlier. That means the main street itself is running 10x slower than it would otherwise, at least toward the start, as each car that enters at the start has to wait for the hundreds of cars merging in from side streets in front of it. Cars that were not doing that from side streets 20 years ago because their GPS maps were not directing them to
In traffic jams on motorways google often directs me to come off at a slip road only to immediately rejoin the motorway. These slip roads are fairly empty and thus my journey time improves.
The overall implication to the traffic jam is negative though. Everyone rejoining slows down traffic more than leaving it speeds traffic up.
Any time I see a "much too nice for this neighborhood" vehicle turning around, I know it's because their mapping software gives the impression of this being "a shortcut" (it is not).
Regardless, I loves me roadway to noway.
1. https://howmanydayssincemontaguestreetbridgehasbeenhit.com/
Incredibly funny, and also incredibly sad, because it's true. Weren't there cases of people dying from dehydration after being misled in some desert by their GPS?
This is a sad, sad issue of culture and education.