Someone didn’t sort the hazardous waste properly. I have personally only seen one garbage truck belching smoke. But not to this extreme.

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About once a year there is a burning garbage truck in the news in the Fort Worth metro area, usually in the summer months. One this past summer because someone disposed of Lithium Ion batteries. They don't like getting squished.

It truly boggles the mind.
How drivers today end up with a qualified license is beyond me.
Another bridge hit

A wrong turn one can understand but to continue driving...

Vehicle height compounds dangers of speed for pedestrians

The faster a vehicle is moving when it strikes a pedestrian, the more likely it is to inflict serious injuries. Exactly how much more likely depends in part on the height of the vehicle, with taller vehicles compounding the risk from higher crash speeds, new research from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety shows.

IIHS researchers analyzed pedestrian crashes to develop injury risk curves showing how speed affects crash outcomes. They found that the effect of crash speed on injury risk was magnified for vehicles with taller front ends. Compared with risk curves developed using crash data from Europe, where tall passenger vehicles are less common, risk curves for the U.S. show pedestrians here begin to suffer more serious injuries at lower speeds.

“A small increase in crash speed can really ramp up the danger to a pedestrian,” IIHS President David Harkey said. “Our fondness for tall SUVs and pickups in the U.S. has intensified that effect.”

The findings suggest that the 25 mph speed limit commonly used in residential neighborhoods in the U.S. may be too high for bustling city centers or other areas with large numbers of pedestrians.

It truly boggles the mind.
How drivers today end up with a qualified license is beyond me.
Another bridge hit

A wrong turn one can understand but to continue driving...

Yeah, it's not as though it was even close to being almost low enough to make it.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Yeah, it's not as though it was even close to being almost low enough to make it.

Most double deckers are at least, 14' high. Bridge 12'6".
Hmm, let me do the math...

Yet another blind bus driver

Yet another blind bus driver

Roadway near me has several sets of signs HGV right lane only. It is five lanes wide. Every day I see HGV in every lane. Don't they read English? Are they texting instead of looking out the window?

There are nuts & there are NUTS!


Irony is thy name

Hmm...
...bus, approx. 14'3" - bridge, 8'3".

Irony is thy name

Potential explanation: The driver was from the continent and simply didn't knew what this strange triangular sign, which reads 8'-3", meant. So this looks more like some kind of railway specific signage; to register the bridge type or whatever...

It's not the driver who made a mistake here. The ambiguous signage is to blame. Just kidding.

[EDIT to add:] The UK signed the Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals (1968) but to this day has not ratified it. This convention also standardized the 'height limit' sign [*] which must be circular; limits given in Meters; optionally a second line indicating feet/inch.

Height limit sign in the UK:
Hah, already the previous 1949 Geneva UN Protocol on Road Signs and Signals (page 94 (PDF:102)) standardized circular heigh limits in Meters.

[*] graphic representation of the minor differences in traffic signs for all European countries at the end of this long Wiki article.

Both the circular and triangular signs are used - the circular one is an advanced warning that the road you are on has a height restriction, with the triangular one at the point of the restriction.
Also any driver of a public service bus in the UK has to pass a competence test, which includes sign recognition. Further, the driver will have been informed of the basic dimensions of the bus (length, width and height), and there is a sign in the cab stating the height.

The fact that two buses have hit the same bridge in the last few days suggests that there has been a diversion in place, and the people that planned the diversion did not take into account that there are low bridges on that route, and that bridge is too low for the vast majority of lorries and buses....

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Both the circular and triangular signs are used - the circular one is an advanced warning that the road you are on has a height restriction, with the triangular one at the point of the restriction.

Interesting... We only have one type, the circular one, which is always placed immediately in front of an obstacle or fixed at it atop the lane. Stupid, isn't it?

Normally, there are nowhere advanced warnings that roads have height restrictions. The rule of thump is the Autobahn and national roads don't have restrictions, but you never know for secondary roads. So if truck or coach drivers don't plan their route carefully they easily can end up in front of such a railway bridge on rural roads with no option to easily turn around. It's the same with load restrictions. Early information on restrictions far ahead of the actual obstacle seems to be sophisticated, which why we don't have that.

The only previous warning we sometimes get, is, if there's a temporary diversion of a national highway (federal road) along secondary state or county roads with height limited bridges. Then, a few hundred meters before the first obstacle, an artificial obstacle is erected across the road out of scaffolding components with broad red/white striped warning panels hanging from thin chains, which then come into contact with too tall vehicle's roofs; hopefully generating enough rattling noise to be noticed.

It's interesting to read comments regarding signage & drivers.
In the past, a reasonable excuse was available for many a bridge hit.
Too many drivers were used to driving single deckers & ocassionally ended up driving double deckers.
We see that here every weekday as double deckers are used to cover the academy & college runs between 2 & 4pm.

Unfortunately there are some bridges that defy even single deckers & that 8'3" bridge is one of them.
The average height of a single decker is 10' but they can vary between 10' & 13'1".

Regarding bridge strikes, Rob made the best statement ever.
The height of a modern large vehicle is predomintally displayed in the cab for all drivers to see.

Recently, I've seen height display signs in 3.5 ton vehicles.
There is no excuse for any driver to hit a bridge.

In many situations, it all boils down to my favourite mantra:
Too many fail to use the Mk1 computer & for an easy day use technology.

BTW, the form is a bit sluggish.

BTW, the form is a bit sluggish.

Yes, server is a bit slow today...

Bus driver dies, multiple passengers taken to hospital as bus and truck crash closes Hume Highway.

The bus, carrying about 40 passengers en route from Melbourne to Sydney, crashed into the rear of a truck while both were travelling north up a steep incline along the roadway.

It was 3:30am, so the most likely cause for this was either the driver fell asleep, or there were no lights on the trailer (here as well as tail lights most trailers will have other lights along the sides, & for a solid trailer lights at the top and even down the sides at the rear, along with lights often all over the prime mover- not just on the front but along it's sides as well (but they wouldn't be visible with a large load on the trailer(s))).

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Grant
Darwin NT

Some more effective signage is needed.

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there were no lights on the trailer

which happens rather easily if the electric cable from the prime mover to the trailer isn't properly locked in place.

<ed>Tell me you require an event data recorder on busses?

<ed>Tell me you require an event data recorder on busses?

AFAIK it varies between states as to type of logger required (ie old style tachograph, up to GPS location & speed tracking) and the type used will vary too between operators- some do the bare minimum, others the full monty.

In this case what is really needed is if they had a dashcam or data logger with video to see what the driver was able to see- if the trailer lights were out, and the buses' headlights were on low beam then by the time the buses' lights hit the reflectors it'd be too late to do much. Even on high beam it may not have helped a lot as it looks like the accident occurred coming out of a sweeping corner.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Getting a reading from any device will be fortunate.
There is a simple answer.
Rear end smash
That amount of damage
SPEED.

speaking of damage, looks like the front bumper isn't a twisted mangled mess and even the license plate is intact.

so just exactly what hit what?

as to speed, posted limit and dead stop