Low parkway bridges eat trucks, buses, kayaks, and bicycles

Beware if you visit Long Island or live here. Lowest ones are 7’-9" and he found it. That bridge was marked 8’-0" with new sign but nothing changed. Some are fatal accidents sadly. Even semi’s hit them and they don’t budge.

Wow, 7’9" is low. We had a semi carrying a bulldozer that didn’t make it under a more typical highway bridge in Akron, OH in 2018.

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Storrow Drive in Boston is famous for eating moving trucks, especially during college move-in weekend (this weekend!). Several really low overpasses there and along Soldier’s Field rd. Hopefully the big trailers of rowing shells that arrive for the Head of the Charles in October know enough not to take that route!

The low bridges on Long Island have a dark history.

How many people have measured the height of their vehicle + rack + boat?

Years ago I measured with roof-mounted bikes and concluded it was safer to carry them on a trailer hitch. I’m a tall dude with large bike frame, and thought the clearance could be too close for comfort on top of my mid sized SUV.

Guy hit a bridge with load of steel on it. Steel went forward to cab. Imagine the worse possible thing happening and you’ll be right sadly.

Glad my boats are long I see the tie downs and the bow on them all.

I took a label gun and added bright yellow clearance labels to our vehicles on either the sun visor, steering column, or dashboard, wherever they would fit. Marked in both inches and feet and inches.

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What is really dumb is school buses on the parkways with kids. Driver no in center they can hit some bridges even with small buses. I saw one bus lose a decent piece of plastic and aluminum on the same bridge in the opposite direction. No kids were in the bus at the time.

That’s the name I was trying to remember. I don’t know if it were traffic engineers or insurance people referred to getting or being “Storrowed” when that happens. Storrowed

There was a serious accident there when a bus made the attempt resulting in a significant lawsuit. Garmin was sued for $15,000,000 because the GPS said it was ok for the bus to take that route. I can’t find the outcome but thought Garmin was found not responsible.

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Yep, almost time to make the popcorn. Always good coverage on WBZ. :slight_smile:

Speaking of which…I remember a long time ago, taking a LISP workstation to Lotus headquarters in a rented truck…heading down Storrow Drive and all of a sudden it occurred to me…but it was too late…I was committed. Turns out the truck wasn’t that tall!

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I hadn’t heard the term “Storrowed” until I was looking up articles about it yesterday because of this thread. Must have been coined in the last decade or so since I moved to FL. I went to college at BU, right on Storrow Drive, and used to row on the Charles, so quite familiar with that fun road.

I used to have a delivery route in Cambridge that sometimes took me to Brookline, Allston, and Back Bay. I was losing my mind driving around there, and I was just in a little Isuzu cab over. I was so happy when that job went away.

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We have one here that seems to eat a truck at least every few months…. This may have been the worst of em tho:

The latest debacle is with Amazon routing it’s delivery trucks through there and it claimed a few of em in just a couple weeks

The George Washington Parkway n VA has some very low old bridges. The are well marked and supposedly no trucks are allowed, but every so often a tractor trailer gets on this road and causes major backups as the police have to stop all traffic to allow the truck to back up to an exit before the bridge. On time a double decker tour bus hit the bridge causing at least one death and several injuries.

My favorite 11"8" plus 8"…https://www.youtube.com/c/yovo68/videos

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Crazy :anguished:

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For when you need some cheer https://www.reddit.com/r/11foot8/

I was wondering how many impacts there were for Long Island parkway bridges a year or since they were built.

I have carefully measured the clearance on my box truck conversion camper (no rooftop AC unit, thank heavens, but there are 6" high solar panels so the thing is 11’ 10".) I am really cautious about attending to the posted clearance heights of overpasses and tunnels.

But I goofed while in Michigan last month – as I was leaving the town where I had visited my cousins, I realized this was my last chance to stock up on the state’s freely purveyed “recreational” cannabis products before returning to PA. Thanks to Federal laws on banking not permitting electronic transactions of commerce in “non-legal” products, sales are cash only and I was low on folding money, so I turned into a bank parking lot with a handy remote drive-up ATM kiosk. Which unfortunately had a metal canopy about 2" shorter than the front of my truck box. Oops.

No damage to me but though I had rolled up slowly I left a pretty big ding on the canopy. And when I parked and walked to the adjacent “dispensary” I found it was kind of scuzzy and full of derelicts (“wrong” side of town I guess) and not as pleasant or welcoming as my cousin’s favorite weed boutique in downtown Buchanan to which she had taken me earlier in the visit. Slunk away and drove home without the desired purchases.

I must say the certified CBD gummies my cousin shared with me worked very nicely at relieving a sore back that I had developed during the prior week at kayak camp. And did so without the intestinal woes that plague me when taking any OTC pain relievers.