Not about actually hitting a bridge in a truck obviously, although it seems to be the fashionable thing to do these days.
I’ve been at the same company now 5 years and in all that time that I know about we have had 1 bridge strike, out of up to 25 units and up to as many as 20 rigid’s or so in peak periods. Usually 12 units and 12 rigid’s or so the rest of the year.
And you get to know about every single faux par that anyone makes, it is impossible to keep anything quiet. (I’m talking about bridge strikes here not accidents with other immovable or moveable objects)
Now I don’t know what the statistics are for how many bridge strikes we have in a year across the whole company.
Is it because we have the right procedures in place or because we run at 14" max most of the time?
Do we just attract sensible drivers mostly?
Is it just pure luck because of the places we deliver to or the routes we use?
Is it just because the majority of people can use the eyes and brain to decide a sensible route and avoid hitting bridges?
There is an average of 5 bridge strikes a day an average of 2000 a year.
Obviously, any bridge strike is one too many, but out of the many many trucks on the road each day and each year that is actually probably quite a very small number thankfully, even though 5 a day and 2000 a year sounds a heck of a lot.
I also don’t believe nationality has anything to do with it or age as we have lots of different nationalities and ages of drivers.
simcor:
Not about actually hitting a bridge in a truck obviously, although it seems to be the fashionable thing to do these days.
I’ve been at the same company now 5 years and in all that time that I know about we have had 1 bridge strike, out of up to 25 units and up to as many as 20 rigid’s or so in peak periods. Usually 12 units and 12 rigid’s or so the rest of the year.
And you get to know about every single faux par that anyone makes, it is impossible to keep anything quiet. (I’m talking about bridge strikes here not accidents with other immovable or moveable objects)
Now I don’t know what the statistics are for how many bridge strikes we have in a year across the whole company.
Is it because we have the right procedures in place
or because we run at 14" max most of the time?
Do we just attract sensible drivers mostly?
Is it just pure luck because of the places we deliver to or the routes we use?
Is it just because the majority of people can use the eyes and brain to decide a sensible route and avoid hitting bridges?
There is an average of 5 bridge strikes a day an average of 2000 a year.
Obviously, any bridge strike is one too many, but out of the many many trucks on the road each day and each year that is actually probably quite a very small number thankfully, even though 5 a day and 2000 a year sounds a heck of a lot.
I also don’t believe nationality has anything to do with it or age as we have lots of different nationalities and ages of drivers.
What procedures does your company have to avoid bridge strikes?
They are more rhetoric questions really rather than actual questions.
Just for discussion really.
None other than the usual requirements of height markers to be set and displayed, writing out your height of the vehicle on your trip sheet, and ops check sheet at least 2 times a day sometimes a lot more. The usual 800 pages of SSOW to say you have been trained and or understand how to get out of bed in a morning. The usual posters of various acronyms and procedures for the most basic tasks.
Nothing especially spectacular, although we haven’t gone down the route of Lorry’s cant limbo and size up wise up YET!!!
tommymanc:
Darkside:
What procedures does your company have to avoid bridge strikes?
Not empolying morans ?
Nope, we employ plenty of morons to be fair.
We have planned routes, have to write our heights at start of shift, reset height marker at the end. If following a diversion we use our eyes, common sense and because of all this, we’ve not had a bridge strike in years. We run approx 100 units, 200 trailers, 50 rigids across an average of 400 runs in a 24h period.
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If you don’t run higher than 14 foot that obviously helps. It means you can fit under a lot more bridges than a company running at 15’10 can which means your chances of hitting a bridge whilst following a car sat nav and paying no attention to road signs is much lower.
Its a inexcusable mistake to make and its a individual thing there is no one who can train you how to not hit a bridge it is lack of concentration or simply the person dont have the brains to think about 2 things at once no planning
In France [emoji632] bridges are marked up at 5 metres and more, I can’t recall any French drivers hitting our bridges in the UK,
The Benelux and Germany are strict on 4.0 metres but the French run higher trailers
DickyNick:
If you don’t run higher than 14 foot that obviously helps. It means you can fit under a lot more bridges than a company running at 15’10 can which means your chances of hitting a bridge whilst following a car sat nav and paying no attention to road signs is much lower.
Sat Navs are a poor excuse, it doesn’t show pedestrians or children but they still get run over,
5 a day sounds like a lot but consider the number of trucks out there every day and night, its not a great percentage really.
Be interesting to know how many other at fault accidents there are involving trucks on the roads each day / night compared to bridge strikes.
Not saying they should happen considering they are more avoidable than other crashes, but I kindof wonder if its just because they are more visible that we get to hear more about them.
To answer why it hapens you’d need all sorts of info such as size of truck / trailer, agency or full timer*, accident record of driver, company strike rate, nationality of driver, nationality of truck, bridge location and its strike rate etc.
It does seem its the same bridges getting reported regularly must admit, eg A5 Hinkley i believe is one of the worst, but why have a low bridge on a major route? Bit like knowing there’s a really badly designed junction with high accident rate but not actually adjusting it.
- Not agency bashing as i was one for 18 months, just a useful factor.