In an error of judgement likely to cause heartburn a driver got his truck wedged under a notoriously low bridge in Cape Town early on Thursday.
Busses and trucks have smashed into the battered 2.5-metre high Muizenberg railway bridge for decades. And despite warnings about the low level bridge‚ the scenario was no different when the roof was partially torn off a truck that tried to negotiate the obstacle on Thursday.
Peak hour traffic on Atlantic Road had to wait as the red-faced driver managed to extricate the damaged vehicle from the bridge – topped with an advertising billboard for a popular antacid — after about 10 minutes.
City of Cape Town traffic services spokesperson Maxine Bezuidenhout said the truck driver was not injured during the incident. “The driver was stuck for maximum ten minutes. He then drove off. All lanes [are] open‚” she said.
A spate of similar accidents saw the installation of a state-of-the-art 3D laser scanning system to measure the height of trucks and alert drivers of the low bridge ahead.
Cape Town’s mayoral committee member for transport Brett Herron said at the time that the system used an infrared laser beam to read the height of the vehicles and their load.
“Should it detect that a vehicle in the turning lane is higher than 2.5m from the road surface‚ a warning system is triggered at the intersection with Atlantic Road‚” he said. “A signboard with high-power LED lights will flash for about 30 seconds‚ indicating to the driver that their vehicle is too high to cross underneath the railway bridge‚” said Herron.
It is unclear if the system was not operational or the driver simply ignored height restriction warnings.
Truck driver lands in a pickle negotiating low bridge
In an error of judgement likely to cause heartburn a driver got his truck wedged under a notoriously low bridge in Cape Town early on Thursday.
Busses and trucks have smashed into the battered 2.5-metre high Muizenberg railway bridge for decades. And despite warnings about the low level bridge‚ the scenario was no different when the roof was partially torn off a truck that tried to negotiate the obstacle on Thursday.
Peak hour traffic on Atlantic Road had to wait as the red-faced driver managed to extricate the damaged vehicle from the bridge – topped with an advertising billboard for a popular antacid — after about 10 minutes.
City of Cape Town traffic services spokesperson Maxine Bezuidenhout said the truck driver was not injured during the incident. “The driver was stuck for maximum ten minutes. He then drove off. All lanes [are] open‚” she said.
A spate of similar accidents saw the installation of a state-of-the-art 3D laser scanning system to measure the height of trucks and alert drivers of the low bridge ahead.
Cape Town’s mayoral committee member for transport Brett Herron said at the time that the system used an infrared laser beam to read the height of the vehicles and their load.
“Should it detect that a vehicle in the turning lane is higher than 2.5m from the road surface‚ a warning system is triggered at the intersection with Atlantic Road‚” he said. “A signboard with high-power LED lights will flash for about 30 seconds‚ indicating to the driver that their vehicle is too high to cross underneath the railway bridge‚” said Herron.
It is unclear if the system was not operational or the driver simply ignored height restriction warnings.
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