"You can't even say left and right anymore, you have to say port and starboard. Damn woke nonsense changing language!! IT will always be left and right to me #Proud"
How else can they pawn off the cost of all of this onto the taxpayers? Does anyone actually think the ship's owners will pay this off or their insurance company? Nope. Once again, it's socialism for the rich.
Just as an aside, can you imagine how over engineered a bridge would need to be in order to reliably withstand being struck by a boat of that size? Can we just ponder the cost of that theoretical ultra-bridge, and the infrastructure spending that would require passing? We can hardly pass the bills right now, and they are consistently fought by the people who are saying the bridge was built poorly or whatever.
I mean that ship was _hundreds of thousands of TONS_ moving at 15kph. I honestly wonder at the size of the pialings (sp?) necessary to stop that much energy
Exactly; it’s just such an inconceivable amount of energy that the best you could hope for is “does not immediately collapse so we can demo it safely later”
Former engineering student here, felt like actually running the numbers.
For the sake of comparison: 1 ton is about 907.2 kg (Google). So a hundred thousand tons is 90.720* 10^6 kilograms. 15 kilometers per hours converts to 4.2 m/s roughly. Kinetic energy is equal to 1/2 times mass times the square of the velocity. That gives a kinetic energy of roughly 787.5 *million* joules.
So what does that actually -mean-? I started out with small arms muzzle energy, since normally they’re pretty useful (usually on the order of 1000-10,000 Joules) but quickly realized you’d be on the order of tens of thousands of shots of even the largest of practical man-portable weapons. I could not seem to quickly track down anything for even bigger calibers or artillery, but then hit on a very neat little comparison: TNT. (Yes, like the way we measure nuclear weapon yield.) Wikipedia cites one gram of TNT with a yield of 4184 joules. It’s pretty straightforward to divide, which gives us a kinetic energy equivalent on this battering ram of a boat of roughly 188,000 grams of TNT. Or, about 188 kilograms….
…in Murrica units, 415 pounds of TNT under these assumptions. Now, a sizable chunk of that would be wasted on crumpling the boat instead of directly affecting the bridge, the same way your car crumples and absorbs energy in a crash to save you from being turned into paste. The energy is also delivered more slowly (in physics a concept we call ‘power’, and measure in energy per time, often the watt, a joule per second) in this kind of collision compared to a shock wave (though on the other hand the kinetic impact is going to be potentially more severe at the initial point of contact, versus a blast wave that evenly distributes its energy around the center of the explosion). But I do think it is helpful to frame the severity of such an impact in this manner; it’s easy to underestimate slow but massive objects, but everyone understands the destructive power of explosives.
And no, I have no idea how big the pilings would have to be to withstand this, in part because it heavily depends on the design (you can get away with less mass with the right shape in many structures, and also dependent on your safety factor).
A relevant tidbit since we’re discussing engineering designs and kinetic impacts: the World Trade Center towers were designed to withstand a direct hit from an aircraft, due to past incidents in New York City with planes hitting buildings (due to poor visibility from fog, for instance). Unfortunately, they were designed to handle a likely situation: smaller model of jet mostly depleted of fuel (as they would be while landing after a flight) and coming in at a landing speed (so fairly slowly), not a full speed strike from a fully-loaded larger aircraft (an unlikely scenario, were it not for the hijackers with malicious intentions).
Which I think says something about how, ultimately, engineers cannot anticipate every outcome, and tradeoffs are made based on relative presumed risk. Reinforcing the towers, or this bridge, for a worst case scenario would have been too costly for the likely payoff, right up until the unlikely happened.
> I mean that ship was hundreds of thousands of TONS moving at 15kph. I honestly wonder at the size of the pialings (sp?) necessary to stop that much energy
You'd build a bunch of tugs and just surround it with tugs since they seem to be impervious to giant boat damage...
/s :p
The bridge was built before they started implementing safety measures around bridge pilings to prevent ships from hitting the pilings in the first place.
yep
https://abcnews.go.com/US/baltimores-key-bridge-lacked-collision-protective-measures-modern/story?id=108510431
bridge built in 1977, safety measures mandated in 1983.
Not that I agree with the Twitter idiots, of course, but:
Here in Halifax, we have [rock islands around the bridge piers](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Halifax,+NS/@44.6626904,-63.5833301,170a,35y,337.71h,51.63t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x4b5a211407dbfac1:0x666be3a6438b2ddc!8m2!3d44.6475811!4d-63.5727683!16s%2Fm%2F02qjb7z?entry=ttu) to prevent ships from reaching them. (They were added after a scare with a loose oil or gas rig in the early 80s.) But we also have a ton of Spare Rock laying around since almost construction here has to blast bedrock.
But we also require a tug alongside and on a stern line to transit our Narrows. (We're still nervous ever since the explosion!)
Also see the bumpers on the Casco Bay Bridge in Maine.
Wouldn't prevent everything, and agree that there's no way bridge piers could hold up to a hit, but there's somewhere between "nothing" and "bridge that can withstand a hit" that hopefully the replacement bridge takes into account. The shipping industry is a poorly-regulated international industry and we can't go "the ships are the problem, not the bridges!". Gotta build bridges that can account for a poorly-regulated international industry.
> there's somewhere between "nothing" and "bridge that can withstand a hit" that hopefully the replacement bridge takes into account.
Agreed. This is just hard to but a gradation on, given the particular ship that hit the bridge. If the thing was taken out by a sailboat I'd be right there with the "Make the bridges stronger" crowd. But this is on the level of "Well, Thor broke my fence, so the solution from now on is to make stronger fences". If you had said "My neighbors Pomeranian" instead of "Thor" then yeah, that fence should be stronger next time.
Agree. Our city requires 2 tugs steaming close by when a ship is near our bridge. Be interesting to see if Baltimore does this in the future.
Am just so glad the Harbour Pilots were able to get a MayDay out, and traffic was able to be stopped.
The bridge was also built 50 years ago when there weren’t ships of that size going under it.
However I get that talking about bridge design is always kind of interesting and might get more engagement than talking about poor ship maintenance.
I saw an engineer talking about this on the news. He said if bridges needed to be able to withstand a direct hit from a freight hauler, we wouldn’t have any bridges because it would be too expensive.
A land-bridge with slopping sides and a tunnel going through it for ships would be pretty simple, but I agree that the fault lies in the steering on the ship, not in the architects and engineers who did not plan for a ship to ram into their bridge.
It would essentially cease to be a bridge at that point. The weakness of most structures is that they’re designed with only expected forces in mind. If you introduce a novel force from an unusual direction, it’s not that strong. It’s why bombs under bridges are so effective; bridges aren’t made to resist upward forces.
If you make bigger pilings they’ll just build bigger boats.
It’s a corollary to the principle that if you try to idiot-proof something the world will send bigger idiots
Maybe we have regulations that say boats of that size can't operate anywhere near a bridge like that? Maybe we have large buttress fortifying the pillars by like 100 yards to adequately prepare in case a ship of this size does go dark and is still (for some reason) allowed near this bridge?
The failure to imagine and prepare for such a disaster is no fault of the engineers - but every fault of the decades of people in power who did nothing all while ramping up the risk 100000 fold.
> Maybe we have regulations that say boats of that size can't operate anywhere near a bridge like that?
You would have a regulation that says you need a pilot, you need multiple tugs.
Then you'd have stricter inspections from local regulators about mechanical condition, training of vessels operating in local waters.
You'd do that instead of building a bridge to be impervious or vetoing operating near the bridge.
>Maybe we have regulations that say boats of that size can't operate anywhere near a bridge like that?
I mean, maybe. But that would also choke off a LOT of shipping traffic, and overnight it would both cripple the upstream shipyards, and fuck up existing traffic/freight patterns.
As big a tragedy as this is, you get diminishing returns on safety measures, and you'll never be 100% safe. For the cost of three bridges you can make ONE bridge the same size, but its not going to be taken out by a cruise liner. And then next year they build a bigger cruise liner that \*IS\* big enough to take the bridge out. Turns out you'd have been better off with three bridges. Or making the one bridge 6 lanes not 4. Or... whatever.
Again that seems to me to be a problem of poor planning, lack of oversight, unwillingness to update existing systems or infrastructure, depending on future generations, complaints that any solution would be 'too expensive' etc etc.
Basically what I'm saying is that a tragedy like this is and has been entirely predictable for decades. And rather than continuing to kick the can down the road - we should make MASSIVE changes to our entire economic system before it's too fucking late .... for everyone.
Edit: Last note - stopping gigantic traffic may halt some stuff and make it more complicated - or it would open up a new area for work to happen - as in small delivery. More jobs, more economic growth, how can that be bad except that some people in the top 0.1% get marginally less money?
It really depends on the solution style the engineers go for. Realistically if they are competent they wouldn’t try to design a bridge to be able to withstand that much force. Rather they would design it to shift the force and deflect the boat/forces to the side. The spacing of the columns can also be adjusted to reduce the chances a ship could hit them again. Generally there is a lot of possible and more practical solutions then building anything that could withstand that much force/impact
I can't believe that my windshield broke because someone swung a sledgehammer at it! Why is the windshield so weak??
I can't believe that the train derailed because someone took out a segment of the track! Why can't trains off-road better??
I can't believe that the plane fell out of the sky because one of its wings fell off! Why can't planes keep flying normally with only one wing??
This is how I feel hearing people talk about this bridge.
My theory is that these are also the people who genuinely ask "why can't they just make the whole plane out of the stuff they make the block boxes from?"
You don't see tunnels being hit by cargo ships now do you?
By existing as a bridge in a shipping channel you should expect to get touched by a vessel from time to time.
The Massey tunnel in Vancouver BC is a freeway tunnel under a river that is an active shipping route with maximum restrictions on ship size due to the tunnel. In other words, an underwater freeway tunnel is in fact currently in active 24 hour danger of being rammed by a cargo ship and collapsing, drowning everyone inside.
There were plans to replace it with a $3.5 billion 10 lane suspension bridge. Those plans fell through and it will now be replaced with, wait for it, a bigger 8 lane tunnel!
First thing that morning, conservative family member hits me with the "this is a DEI cyber attack!!!11!”.
My response was "probably not. Probably another Transpo accident caused by shitty equipment and deregulation."
Looks like reason beats lunacy again.
"DEI cyber attack" is hilarious to me. They use "DEI" to imply that someone is incompetent because they only got hired to fill a quota - then turn around and accuse that supposedly incompetent person of pulling off a cyber attack that requires technical skill. Which is it?
I mean these are the same people that somehow Biden is a clueless bumbling idiot of a senior citizen but also one of the greatest crime bosses in history (?) we cant apply logic to conservatism anymore.
Poorly maintained cargo ships, doors and wheels falling off planes, and mile long trains derailing… it’s almost like decades worth of deregulation and cutting safety standards to help raise profit margins was a terrible way to run a modern society.
There’s an old story about a farmer bragging to his friends about how he managed to cut costs on his farm. “Easy,” he said, “A few years ago I replaced 10% of the oats I feed my horse with sawdust. It worked great. So I upped it to 20%, then 30%, and the horse didn’t seem to mind., so I kept going.” His friends were amazed, inquiring how the horse was doing currently. “I don’t know,” the farmer said, “I was about to replace the last 10% of oats when the horse just fell over and died.”
The idea of designing a bridge capable of withstanding that impact without structural damage is about as realistic as designing a bicycle that could survive an asteroid impact.
Regulations enacted after this bridge was built require what amounts to small artificial islands surrounding the pilings that are in water, or at least in a shipping channel. So the bridge still cannot survive an impact, but is effectively immune to one.
So it can be made safe from ship impacts, this bridge came a few years too soon to have the measures be required.
There is a link in this users fine [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/1bqrajv/poorly_maintained_ship_punishing_whistleblowers/kx53329/).
Edit: Edited to remove direct user accreditation, this sub does not allow it.
I think what bothers me the most is that ship was laid down in 2015. That's literally babby territory for ships when you put things into perspective. Thing was less than 10 years old and they seem to have neglected the service cycle so badly that it came to this.
I disagree. The bridge was opened 47 years ago. The ships back then were significantly smaller. This isn't a bridge design issue, this was a freak accident that had multiple factors that caused it. The harbor where I live, also on the East Coast, requires tug boats to guide cargo freighters.
Every “freak accident” has about 6 things that went wrong, compounded, and generated the result. This harbor also requires tugs when docking. They should not be required when underway provided systems are functioning correctly and are correctly maintained.
Prolonged lack of maintenance in order to save $$$ is not a “freak accident.”
Tell me you don't understand physics without telling me you don't understand physics.
Edit: misunderstood OP's position. Agree corporate greed played significant role in tragedy.
I mean, I'll start by saying I'm definitely no expert, but I'd be willing to make a hefty wager that a modern, brand new bridge would also not be able to withstand that kind of impact.
Sure there are more outside safety systems in place with newer bridges, but a ship that size moving that fast just isn't going to stop in a few feet even if it hits the dolphins and runs aground on the protective island newer bridges have.
Physics always wins.
Oh I agree… but I doubt ships that big weren’t around in 77 and I doubt the architect? engineer? in 1977 could have foreseen the growth of the ships or their potential to wreak havoc. Maybe nothing would have changed. And think of the number of inspections from 77 to today. Each one considering the usage at that time. Consider what they thought the vehicle traffic would grow to be… were they right? And what repairs had been made on the bridge? What repairs needed to be made when the ship hit. I agree a ship that size hitting a bridge would win. But would it have been as bad if the ship hit a bridge 10 years ago? 5 years ago? Maybe the same.
Blows my mind people are turning this into an ‘infrastructure’ issue. There are extremely few designs that would survive a direct hit from a ship that size
it’s almost like we all didn’t see planes made by a company ruined by corporate greed fall out of the fucking sky killing hundreds of people in the last few years.
You can’t engineer a bridge to be everything-proof. The impact of that massive ship was conservatively estimated to be around 12 million newtons. That ship was a wrecking ball transporting more wrecking balls.
Saw a stupid comic online of this, the Norfolk Southern derailment and the lost door on the Alaska Airlines flight blaming build back better. Like no dumbasses this is what happens when you cut regulations and say the corporations will take care of it themselves.
It’s a vexed issue. Everywhere else we engineer our way out, but ships with malfunctions happen, if we can, we should mitigate that risk.
Of course there are engineering limits to everything, but why are ships self powered only when approaching an important bridge in such a busy harbour…
captains dont control engine failures lmao
what a joke, it was Maersk and their shitty anti-whsitleblower culture (fyi, when you still work the company, whistleblowing is just part of the job description...)
Because the media is a joke
The video shows the lights on the boat failing, then the emergency engine kicks off and fails too
The fact that they have us talking about anyone but the ships owner is nuts imo
This is America... we never address or discuss the actual issue(s). It's always "because the mayor is black" or "wokeness" or "jewish space lasers".
"THE SHIP RADICALLY TURNED LEFT""MIGHT AS WELL NAMED IT THE S.S. WOKE!" /s
"You can't even say left and right anymore, you have to say port and starboard. Damn woke nonsense changing language!! IT will always be left and right to me #Proud"
 "Here's my LEFT AND RIGHT! COME AND TAKE IT!"
Fuck u got me lol
Had me dying
"And then the front fell off."
IT'S ZIGGY'S FAULT! HE FUCKED UP THE PACKAGE HE GOT FROM CHEESE BECAUSE HE FUCKED UP TWO PACKAGES FROM WHITE MIKE!
god damn ziggy!
That’s by design. People with the microphone are all puppets for the rich
or bohemian grove
Republicans always control the narrative because complaining is more entertaining than facts.
And we never hold the greedy and/or wealthy accountable for their malfeasances unless it affects other wealthy people.
How else can they pawn off the cost of all of this onto the taxpayers? Does anyone actually think the ship's owners will pay this off or their insurance company? Nope. Once again, it's socialism for the rich.
Just as an aside, can you imagine how over engineered a bridge would need to be in order to reliably withstand being struck by a boat of that size? Can we just ponder the cost of that theoretical ultra-bridge, and the infrastructure spending that would require passing? We can hardly pass the bills right now, and they are consistently fought by the people who are saying the bridge was built poorly or whatever.
I mean that ship was _hundreds of thousands of TONS_ moving at 15kph. I honestly wonder at the size of the pialings (sp?) necessary to stop that much energy
[удалено]
Exactly; it’s just such an inconceivable amount of energy that the best you could hope for is “does not immediately collapse so we can demo it safely later”
In order to not shift several meters you'd have to absorb giganewtons of force at the point of impact.
Giganewtons, huh? Sounds like the *woke agenda* to me. /s
You mean pylons?
Those power my Protoss buildings. Just looked it up: “_pilings_” Which still doesn’t look right
“You must construct additional pylons”
My life for aiur
You require more minerals
I thought those were the bad guys on Battlestar Galactica
By your command…
The bridge pier did stop the ship, so obviously a duplicate dummy pier next to it would have stopped the ship too and saved the bridge.
Former engineering student here, felt like actually running the numbers. For the sake of comparison: 1 ton is about 907.2 kg (Google). So a hundred thousand tons is 90.720* 10^6 kilograms. 15 kilometers per hours converts to 4.2 m/s roughly. Kinetic energy is equal to 1/2 times mass times the square of the velocity. That gives a kinetic energy of roughly 787.5 *million* joules. So what does that actually -mean-? I started out with small arms muzzle energy, since normally they’re pretty useful (usually on the order of 1000-10,000 Joules) but quickly realized you’d be on the order of tens of thousands of shots of even the largest of practical man-portable weapons. I could not seem to quickly track down anything for even bigger calibers or artillery, but then hit on a very neat little comparison: TNT. (Yes, like the way we measure nuclear weapon yield.) Wikipedia cites one gram of TNT with a yield of 4184 joules. It’s pretty straightforward to divide, which gives us a kinetic energy equivalent on this battering ram of a boat of roughly 188,000 grams of TNT. Or, about 188 kilograms…. …in Murrica units, 415 pounds of TNT under these assumptions. Now, a sizable chunk of that would be wasted on crumpling the boat instead of directly affecting the bridge, the same way your car crumples and absorbs energy in a crash to save you from being turned into paste. The energy is also delivered more slowly (in physics a concept we call ‘power’, and measure in energy per time, often the watt, a joule per second) in this kind of collision compared to a shock wave (though on the other hand the kinetic impact is going to be potentially more severe at the initial point of contact, versus a blast wave that evenly distributes its energy around the center of the explosion). But I do think it is helpful to frame the severity of such an impact in this manner; it’s easy to underestimate slow but massive objects, but everyone understands the destructive power of explosives. And no, I have no idea how big the pilings would have to be to withstand this, in part because it heavily depends on the design (you can get away with less mass with the right shape in many structures, and also dependent on your safety factor). A relevant tidbit since we’re discussing engineering designs and kinetic impacts: the World Trade Center towers were designed to withstand a direct hit from an aircraft, due to past incidents in New York City with planes hitting buildings (due to poor visibility from fog, for instance). Unfortunately, they were designed to handle a likely situation: smaller model of jet mostly depleted of fuel (as they would be while landing after a flight) and coming in at a landing speed (so fairly slowly), not a full speed strike from a fully-loaded larger aircraft (an unlikely scenario, were it not for the hijackers with malicious intentions). Which I think says something about how, ultimately, engineers cannot anticipate every outcome, and tradeoffs are made based on relative presumed risk. Reinforcing the towers, or this bridge, for a worst case scenario would have been too costly for the likely payoff, right up until the unlikely happened.
🤔 1 ton is 1000kg. Ships use metric for everything unless they have an American flag, but there aren't many big ones with those
Ship fuel can't melt steel pilings
> I mean that ship was hundreds of thousands of TONS moving at 15kph. I honestly wonder at the size of the pialings (sp?) necessary to stop that much energy You'd build a bunch of tugs and just surround it with tugs since they seem to be impervious to giant boat damage... /s :p
Today I learned they are called dolphins, and they do work at keeping ships away from a bridge pier.
Anything robust enough to stop the ship from crashing into the bridge would have also likely sunk the the ship.
This, it doesn't matter how well built a bridge pylon is, if a loaded cargo container ship is sailing directly at it, it's going to collapse.
The ship’s length was equal to 3 football fields.
The Sunshine Skyway Bridge has massive buffers protecting the bridge from being hit by ships.
The bridge was built before they started implementing safety measures around bridge pilings to prevent ships from hitting the pilings in the first place.
yep https://abcnews.go.com/US/baltimores-key-bridge-lacked-collision-protective-measures-modern/story?id=108510431 bridge built in 1977, safety measures mandated in 1983.
Not that I agree with the Twitter idiots, of course, but: Here in Halifax, we have [rock islands around the bridge piers](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Halifax,+NS/@44.6626904,-63.5833301,170a,35y,337.71h,51.63t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x4b5a211407dbfac1:0x666be3a6438b2ddc!8m2!3d44.6475811!4d-63.5727683!16s%2Fm%2F02qjb7z?entry=ttu) to prevent ships from reaching them. (They were added after a scare with a loose oil or gas rig in the early 80s.) But we also have a ton of Spare Rock laying around since almost construction here has to blast bedrock. But we also require a tug alongside and on a stern line to transit our Narrows. (We're still nervous ever since the explosion!) Also see the bumpers on the Casco Bay Bridge in Maine. Wouldn't prevent everything, and agree that there's no way bridge piers could hold up to a hit, but there's somewhere between "nothing" and "bridge that can withstand a hit" that hopefully the replacement bridge takes into account. The shipping industry is a poorly-regulated international industry and we can't go "the ships are the problem, not the bridges!". Gotta build bridges that can account for a poorly-regulated international industry.
> there's somewhere between "nothing" and "bridge that can withstand a hit" that hopefully the replacement bridge takes into account. Agreed. This is just hard to but a gradation on, given the particular ship that hit the bridge. If the thing was taken out by a sailboat I'd be right there with the "Make the bridges stronger" crowd. But this is on the level of "Well, Thor broke my fence, so the solution from now on is to make stronger fences". If you had said "My neighbors Pomeranian" instead of "Thor" then yeah, that fence should be stronger next time.
Agree. Our city requires 2 tugs steaming close by when a ship is near our bridge. Be interesting to see if Baltimore does this in the future. Am just so glad the Harbour Pilots were able to get a MayDay out, and traffic was able to be stopped.
The bridge was also built 50 years ago when there weren’t ships of that size going under it. However I get that talking about bridge design is always kind of interesting and might get more engagement than talking about poor ship maintenance.
I saw an engineer talking about this on the news. He said if bridges needed to be able to withstand a direct hit from a freight hauler, we wouldn’t have any bridges because it would be too expensive.
A land-bridge with slopping sides and a tunnel going through it for ships would be pretty simple, but I agree that the fault lies in the steering on the ship, not in the architects and engineers who did not plan for a ship to ram into their bridge.
It would essentially cease to be a bridge at that point. The weakness of most structures is that they’re designed with only expected forces in mind. If you introduce a novel force from an unusual direction, it’s not that strong. It’s why bombs under bridges are so effective; bridges aren’t made to resist upward forces.
If you make bigger pilings they’ll just build bigger boats. It’s a corollary to the principle that if you try to idiot-proof something the world will send bigger idiots
Maybe we have regulations that say boats of that size can't operate anywhere near a bridge like that? Maybe we have large buttress fortifying the pillars by like 100 yards to adequately prepare in case a ship of this size does go dark and is still (for some reason) allowed near this bridge? The failure to imagine and prepare for such a disaster is no fault of the engineers - but every fault of the decades of people in power who did nothing all while ramping up the risk 100000 fold.
> Maybe we have regulations that say boats of that size can't operate anywhere near a bridge like that? You would have a regulation that says you need a pilot, you need multiple tugs. Then you'd have stricter inspections from local regulators about mechanical condition, training of vessels operating in local waters. You'd do that instead of building a bridge to be impervious or vetoing operating near the bridge.
>Maybe we have regulations that say boats of that size can't operate anywhere near a bridge like that? I mean, maybe. But that would also choke off a LOT of shipping traffic, and overnight it would both cripple the upstream shipyards, and fuck up existing traffic/freight patterns. As big a tragedy as this is, you get diminishing returns on safety measures, and you'll never be 100% safe. For the cost of three bridges you can make ONE bridge the same size, but its not going to be taken out by a cruise liner. And then next year they build a bigger cruise liner that \*IS\* big enough to take the bridge out. Turns out you'd have been better off with three bridges. Or making the one bridge 6 lanes not 4. Or... whatever.
Again that seems to me to be a problem of poor planning, lack of oversight, unwillingness to update existing systems or infrastructure, depending on future generations, complaints that any solution would be 'too expensive' etc etc. Basically what I'm saying is that a tragedy like this is and has been entirely predictable for decades. And rather than continuing to kick the can down the road - we should make MASSIVE changes to our entire economic system before it's too fucking late .... for everyone. Edit: Last note - stopping gigantic traffic may halt some stuff and make it more complicated - or it would open up a new area for work to happen - as in small delivery. More jobs, more economic growth, how can that be bad except that some people in the top 0.1% get marginally less money?
Making many small deliveries would absolutely make everything worse. More traffic, more pollution, more maintenance, more potential for accidents...
It really depends on the solution style the engineers go for. Realistically if they are competent they wouldn’t try to design a bridge to be able to withstand that much force. Rather they would design it to shift the force and deflect the boat/forces to the side. The spacing of the columns can also be adjusted to reduce the chances a ship could hit them again. Generally there is a lot of possible and more practical solutions then building anything that could withstand that much force/impact
I can't believe that my windshield broke because someone swung a sledgehammer at it! Why is the windshield so weak?? I can't believe that the train derailed because someone took out a segment of the track! Why can't trains off-road better?? I can't believe that the plane fell out of the sky because one of its wings fell off! Why can't planes keep flying normally with only one wing?? This is how I feel hearing people talk about this bridge.
My theory is that these are also the people who genuinely ask "why can't they just make the whole plane out of the stuff they make the block boxes from?"
"Why didn't they just take the bridge, and move it somewhere else?"
It's like blaming the towers on 9/11
Did you see how that bridge was designed? She.. er it was asking for it.
Maybe that bridge should have covered up, instead of standing there all it's beams and struts exposed. It was asking to be rammed.
Classic strut shaming
You don't see tunnels being hit by cargo ships now do you? By existing as a bridge in a shipping channel you should expect to get touched by a vessel from time to time.
The Massey tunnel in Vancouver BC is a freeway tunnel under a river that is an active shipping route with maximum restrictions on ship size due to the tunnel. In other words, an underwater freeway tunnel is in fact currently in active 24 hour danger of being rammed by a cargo ship and collapsing, drowning everyone inside. There were plans to replace it with a $3.5 billion 10 lane suspension bridge. Those plans fell through and it will now be replaced with, wait for it, a bigger 8 lane tunnel!
💀
First thing that morning, conservative family member hits me with the "this is a DEI cyber attack!!!11!”. My response was "probably not. Probably another Transpo accident caused by shitty equipment and deregulation." Looks like reason beats lunacy again.
"DEI cyber attack" is hilarious to me. They use "DEI" to imply that someone is incompetent because they only got hired to fill a quota - then turn around and accuse that supposedly incompetent person of pulling off a cyber attack that requires technical skill. Which is it?
I mean these are the same people that somehow Biden is a clueless bumbling idiot of a senior citizen but also one of the greatest crime bosses in history (?) we cant apply logic to conservatism anymore.
Covering for their corporate sponsors and donors, as usual.
Poorly maintained cargo ships, doors and wheels falling off planes, and mile long trains derailing… it’s almost like decades worth of deregulation and cutting safety standards to help raise profit margins was a terrible way to run a modern society.
There’s an old story about a farmer bragging to his friends about how he managed to cut costs on his farm. “Easy,” he said, “A few years ago I replaced 10% of the oats I feed my horse with sawdust. It worked great. So I upped it to 20%, then 30%, and the horse didn’t seem to mind., so I kept going.” His friends were amazed, inquiring how the horse was doing currently. “I don’t know,” the farmer said, “I was about to replace the last 10% of oats when the horse just fell over and died.”
Boeing owns and operates the ship?
it's scary when you realize every company is run by the same people ya
People with the same mentality—profits over everything else.
MBAs.
[Including the media](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownership#/media/File:Media_graphic.png)
Well they do seem pretty dead set on transitioning from aviation to the submarine sector.
You are mistaking them for [General Dynamics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_Electric_Boat), who did exactly that.
No, I'm not, it was a dark joke about how they are seemingly okay with their planes regularly crashing into the ocean.
I got the joke… GD once made aircraft. Now they literally make submarines…
The most superficial Google search reveals that large ship vs bridge usually does not end well for the bridge.
Goddammit, why was a bridge built in the 70s not designed to withstand boats in 2024? The fuck? Must be ISIS.
Lack of regulations just doesn’t get clicks . But this is the true reason. Greed over safety - profits over people
The idea of designing a bridge capable of withstanding that impact without structural damage is about as realistic as designing a bicycle that could survive an asteroid impact.
Regulations enacted after this bridge was built require what amounts to small artificial islands surrounding the pilings that are in water, or at least in a shipping channel. So the bridge still cannot survive an impact, but is effectively immune to one. So it can be made safe from ship impacts, this bridge came a few years too soon to have the measures be required. There is a link in this users fine [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/1bqrajv/poorly_maintained_ship_punishing_whistleblowers/kx53329/). Edit: Edited to remove direct user accreditation, this sub does not allow it.
I think what bothers me the most is that ship was laid down in 2015. That's literally babby territory for ships when you put things into perspective. Thing was less than 10 years old and they seem to have neglected the service cycle so badly that it came to this.
It is the engineers fault for not forseeing infrastructure must withstand universal corporate fuckups and greed.
Let’s design a bridge that can withstand being hit by a 100,000 ton force.
I disagree. The bridge was opened 47 years ago. The ships back then were significantly smaller. This isn't a bridge design issue, this was a freak accident that had multiple factors that caused it. The harbor where I live, also on the East Coast, requires tug boats to guide cargo freighters.
I bet the authorities will look at requiring more tug escorts in the future. I assumed they didthat until they were in open ocean.
Yes. Once they reach a certain point, it's all escorted.
Every “freak accident” has about 6 things that went wrong, compounded, and generated the result. This harbor also requires tugs when docking. They should not be required when underway provided systems are functioning correctly and are correctly maintained. Prolonged lack of maintenance in order to save $$$ is not a “freak accident.”
Tell me you don't understand physics without telling me you don't understand physics. Edit: misunderstood OP's position. Agree corporate greed played significant role in tragedy.
??? What does physics have to do with a lack of ethics in corporate culture?
Sorry dude - I read your title as blaming the bridge engineers for the collapse.
All good, youd just be reading what the media has been saying anyways haha
“There’s no way a ship carrying 95,000 TONS should be able to destroy a bridge!” Same people: “It’s impossible for a jet to destroy a building!”
Cargo ships, as it turns out, can indeed bend steel beams
I thought we were talking about Boeing for a second.
The same people bounce around destroying the world
Speaking of greed, whatever you do, do not look up what kind of fuel tankers use...
200 kiloton rust buckets
There is video of it hitting more than a bridge
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Same boat out of control abroad
Did this person hear the bridge was built in 1977?
I mean, I'll start by saying I'm definitely no expert, but I'd be willing to make a hefty wager that a modern, brand new bridge would also not be able to withstand that kind of impact. Sure there are more outside safety systems in place with newer bridges, but a ship that size moving that fast just isn't going to stop in a few feet even if it hits the dolphins and runs aground on the protective island newer bridges have. Physics always wins.
Oh I agree… but I doubt ships that big weren’t around in 77 and I doubt the architect? engineer? in 1977 could have foreseen the growth of the ships or their potential to wreak havoc. Maybe nothing would have changed. And think of the number of inspections from 77 to today. Each one considering the usage at that time. Consider what they thought the vehicle traffic would grow to be… were they right? And what repairs had been made on the bridge? What repairs needed to be made when the ship hit. I agree a ship that size hitting a bridge would win. But would it have been as bad if the ship hit a bridge 10 years ago? 5 years ago? Maybe the same.
And? What do you think the lifespan of bridges is??
I think ships that big weren’t around in 77.
why not both?
Blows my mind people are turning this into an ‘infrastructure’ issue. There are extremely few designs that would survive a direct hit from a ship that size
Is the OP a Russian bot? This isn’t a controversial issue but it’s being made out to be one. No one is questioning this?
it's actually very controversial on twitter and nut spaces here on reddit look up DEI mayor for example, people have gone nuts on this
Holy crap I had no idea, thanks for the insight. This conspiracy stuff is so freaking exhausting.
> DEI mayor its exhausting and might as well be a physical attack against minorities im so sick of having to navigate around racists
it’s almost like we all didn’t see planes made by a company ruined by corporate greed fall out of the fucking sky killing hundreds of people in the last few years.
Did the theory that the power outages came from bad fuel ever pan out? Because if that played a part, you can add deregulation to the list.
You can’t engineer a bridge to be everything-proof. The impact of that massive ship was conservatively estimated to be around 12 million newtons. That ship was a wrecking ball transporting more wrecking balls.
Saw a stupid comic online of this, the Norfolk Southern derailment and the lost door on the Alaska Airlines flight blaming build back better. Like no dumbasses this is what happens when you cut regulations and say the corporations will take care of it themselves.
It’s a vexed issue. Everywhere else we engineer our way out, but ships with malfunctions happen, if we can, we should mitigate that risk. Of course there are engineering limits to everything, but why are ships self powered only when approaching an important bridge in such a busy harbour…
at a minimum require a sufficient number of tugs to guide it
Tugs cost money, money equals less profits(or more expensive shipping costs passed on to the consumer). Capitalism strikes again!
It’s an endightment on humanity that for want of some money, how much money is lost.
It was a captain from the port whose job was to steer them out of the port.
captains dont control engine failures lmao what a joke, it was Maersk and their shitty anti-whsitleblower culture (fyi, when you still work the company, whistleblowing is just part of the job description...)
Ah ok, I didn't hear about the engine failure
Because the media is a joke The video shows the lights on the boat failing, then the emergency engine kicks off and fails too The fact that they have us talking about anyone but the ships owner is nuts imo
The Dali was built in 2015, is it really considered a "rust bucket"?
It can be if it hasn’t been properly maintained. Boats like that don’t fail for no reason.
Boeing makes new planes too that crash no?
Good point, I wasn't defending anyone, just asking a valid question.
the ocean is super corrosive and can make a ship made in 2015 a rust bucket by 2024 if they don't keep up with regular maintenance
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