I’ve stumbled across http://11foot8.com multiple times in the past. For the uninitiated: there is a low-clearance train trestle in Durham, NC with a traffic cam that captures footage of trucks - specifically, trucks with trailers taller than 11’ 8" - ignoring all warning signs and wrecking into the bridge, typically in spectacular fashion.

The videos are all pretty similar. Truck meets bridge. Truck falls in love with bridge. Truck gets its top ripped off and blocks the intersection for hours while folks try to un-fuck the situation. Most of the time I don’t even watch them, I just kinda think to myself “it got another one” and move on. The videos are posted on YouTube and are typically embedded in the repost, so I’ve never actually visited the website.

Until today.

The site has a FAQ…and FAQ me, it’s FAQing fascinating. Let’s step through it a bit.

Why is the bridge so low?

This train trestle is about 100 years old. At the time when it was built, there were no standards for minimum clearance.

Playing the history out a bit in my head I’d file this in the category of “unknown unknowns”. Presumably, 100 years ago nobody was anticipating that some day a vehicle might come along at 30MPH that was taller than “a reasonable height”, where “reasonable” was effectively defined as 11’ 8". As a thought experiment, imagine trying to plan for a potential future in which road-bound vehicles are 2500 feet tall. Imagine trying to tell everyone “Look, I understand how things work Today, but 100 years from now maybe there will be a thing coming down this road that will be a half-mile high so we should think about that as a possibility and try to solve for it - and solve for it right now.” Hyperbole aside: they almost certainly were not prepared for The Rise of U-Haul, alongside which came a horde of terrifyingly unqualified jacknuts driving trucks full of loveseats that they probably should’ve never been allowed to drive in the first place.

On a personal note: I come from a family chock full o’ Car Culture and Truck Drivers - the kind of immensely-qualified folks who have CDLs and years of experience driving vehicles, the kind of folks for whom being able to drive well is a point of pride. …and I am not that guy. I have personally driven a U-Haul more than once, and I have been terrified every time. Gentle reader…I am your unqualified jacknut. I don’t know which is more insane: that U-Haul will toss me the keys with no questions asked (so long as they get paid), or that I’ve actually taken those keys.

Anyhow, I digress.

How often do trucks crash into the bridge?

On average, about once a month a truck gets visibly damaged at the bridge. However, every day I see trucks that trip the overheight warning lights, stop and turn into the side street.

Okay. So in terms of frequency of impact, this trestle results in an actual “GCN” about once a month. There’s an interesting thing here that I’d like to explore around “near misses” - the frequency with which trucks trip the warning signals and veer off - but I’ll reserve that for a future post. IMO the real meat of this FAQ is in the next section.

Why don’t they fix it?

Depends on who “they” are and on what “fix” means.

The North Carolina Railroad Company owns the train trestle, and their concern is primarily with keeping the trains running and keeping them running safely. So their concern is mainly with reducing the impact of the truck crashes on the actual structure of the train trestle. As far as they are concerned, they solved that problem by installing the crash beam. The city of Durham has installed “low clearance” signs on each of the 3 blocks leading up to the trestle (Gregson is a one-way road). There is a sensor that triggers an LED blackout warning sign when In overheight vehicle approaches the trestle (more info below). Several blocks ahead of the trestle the speed limit is 25 MPH. The folks from the city planning department said that they made an effort to prevent accidents. The North Carolina Dept. of Transportation maintains the road, but not the signage. I suspect they have much bigger problems to deal with statewide than this bridge.

Oh. Oh man. Now here we’ve really got something. This chunk of FAQ is what inspired this post.

So we’ve got Team Trestle, responsible for the bridge itself pretty much exclusively. We’ve got Team City, with ultimate responsibility over neither the bridge nor the road, but…I guess they do the signs? So…that’s…something? And we’ve got Team State, who owns the road…but not the bridge (nor the signs).

Why am I talking about all this? Well, this is why “Act Like an Owner” is important as a fundamental tenet. In the example that I’ve (verbosely) described above, trucks getting wrecked isn’t “anyone’s problem”. …but suppose we project that problem space onto a single company. Suppose we call that company “LinkedIn”, and suppose that fucking up someone else’s truck isn’t some external factor that you don’t have to worry about. Suppose at the end of the day it’s Your Truck.

Maybe setting up a crash beam to protect your trestle doesn’t quite meet the bar. (heh…see what I did there?) …and maybe you are empowered to do more than just set up more warning signs. …and maybe “I just own the road, and whoever is driving on it is responsible for their own actions” isn’t quite good enough.

I reckon the tl;dr here might be: don’t be a truck-fucker.