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A motorway is closed after a tipper truck collided with an overhead gantry.
Police were called to the M5, near Bristol, at 08:20 GMT, after the tipper collided with the gantry sign in lane one of the southbound carriageway.
The back of the tipper is resting against the gantry and the motorway is shut in both directions between J17 for Bristol Airport and J18 for Avonmouth.
There have been no reported injuries, police said.
The photos have an absurdist, almost artistic quality...
Fortunately it seems there are no injuries and the Smart Motorway gantry seems to have taken the impact well, but the VMSes have taken a right old beating
rhyds wrote: ↑Thu May 05, 2022 09:15
Update on the magic height changing bridge
Flintshire CC have replied and are "looking in to it"
Update to the previous update:
Apparently following a review the job has been passed to the correct department for resolution "at the earliest opportunity"
Now, I'm guessing said "earliest opportunity" will be the next signage replacement in 3-5 working years rather than someone going out in a week with a load of patches!
Update to the Update to the update:
The signs have now been updated and are mostly correct!
The photos have an absurdist, almost artistic quality...
Fortunately it seems there are no injuries and the Smart Motorway gantry seems to have taken the impact well, but the VMSes have taken a right old beating
It is amazing to me that it is possible to drive a tipper truck at, say, 40+ mph and not have the entire dashboard flashing and singing at you saying "you've left the lift up, you bloody idiot!" Though I've heard drivers silence the alarms on these because they can be annoying when doing a low speed move, perhaps that's good reason to have two alarms, one for 20 mph or less, and one for 20 mph+.
Interesting that the displays all but fell off on both sides of the gantry, I wonder if these are designed to 'break away' in a crash.
No, I think it's actually quite worrying how they have failed like that. The gantry can't have flexed too much - it speaks to a certain lack of tensile strength to the fixings. I wonder if they're held on by much more than traffic sign strapping. Shame, because the cantilevers are clearly very robust. (assuming it doesn't come out that the whole thing is bent)
Looking at other images, unless they've already been removed, the two nearside AMIs on the northbound and the one on the offside were completely knocked off. It's a miracle nobody was killed.
tom66 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 02, 2023 16:48
It is amazing to me that it is possible to drive a tipper truck at, say, 40+ mph and not have the entire dashboard flashing and singing at you saying "you've left the lift up, you bloody idiot!" Though I've heard drivers silence the alarms on these because they can be annoying when doing a low speed move, perhaps that's good reason to have two alarms, one for 20 mph or less, and one for 20 mph+.
Or even an interlock that prevents speed exceeding a given figure if the body isn't down.
DB617 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 02, 2023 17:51
No, I think it's actually quite worrying how they have failed like that. The gantry can't have flexed too much - it speaks to a certain lack of tensile strength to the fixings. I wonder if they're held on by much more than traffic sign strapping. Shame, because the cantilevers are clearly very robust. (assuming it doesn't come out that the whole thing is bent)
Looking at other images, unless they've already been removed, the two nearside AMIs on the northbound and the one on the offside were completely knocked off. It's a miracle nobody was killed.
The reports I seen seems to indicates that the tipper was wedged in place under the gantry and was torn free, this would have put an enormous amount of force into the structure, its as if a giant had put a crowbar between the steel members and given it a twist. Fittings will certainly not have been robust enough to resist that.
Frankly it could have been much worse, the whole gantry could have failed, remember the M20 bridge collapse ! I believe dump trucks have a warning light that displays when the body is up so did it fail ? , was it disabled or just ignored. https://www.kentonline.co.uk/malling/ne ... ge-156977/
It now seems they have closed the motorway until a structural survey shows whether of not its stable !
Yikes, those mountings are definitely not designed for sudden impacts to the cantilever truss - I suppose it wasn't judged to be a likely scenario given the number of other low structures one could hit on a motorway instead.
The northbound has reopened now, with all the signs and fixtures removed. This was not the best time for the smart motorway to be offline with the roadworks going out at J16 - hopefully the rest of the gantries continue to operate. Southbound is expected to be open by morning. I guess that's a massive vote of confidence for the gantry structure's impact worthiness at least, suggests those were designed to take a hit.
Unfortunately the Prince of Wales bridge is now closed due to a serious multi-vehicle collision. They tagged the Air Ambulance as being involved too - I assume landing at the riverside because the bridge itself has lots of tall things that don't take well to aircraft.
A motorway is closed after a tipper truck collided with an overhead gantry.
Police were called to the M5, near Bristol, at 08:20 GMT, after the tipper collided with the gantry sign in lane one of the southbound carriageway.
The back of the tipper is resting against the gantry and the motorway is shut in both directions between J17 for Bristol Airport and J18 for Avonmouth.
There have been no reported injuries, police said.
The photos have an absurdist, almost artistic quality...
wagon.jpg
Fortunately it seems there are no injuries and the Smart Motorway gantry seems to have taken the impact well, but the VMSes have taken a right old beating
Oh jesus. Reminds me of other trucks doing this thing.
Fantasy Strip Map Creator- feel free to send me some requests!
As a wise roadie said, don't make any mistakes in building roads.
If anyone wants a look, the unfortunate M5 gantry is currently parked on its rescue flatbed trailer in the 'ghost slip road' on the M4 east between Filton and Tormarton. I get to pass it every morning on the way to work. I assume they're waiting for a specialist contractor to find a way of doing NDT on a twenty-metre long truss structure - can't be many of them on standby.
What's interesting to me is how much the structure is hogging on the truck - it's got to be 10 degrees out of horizontal between the end and the midpoint. My rudimentary (for a civil engineer...) knowledge of structures would suggest it is designed to sag level under self-weight when supported from the ends, as opposed to it having been bent upwards by the empty tipper bed. It would not inspire public confidence if it was manufactured straight, then allowed to sag upon installation under cantilever effect...
DB617 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 09, 2023 22:04
If anyone wants a look, the unfortunate M5 gantry is currently parked on its rescue flatbed trailer in the 'ghost slip road' on the M4 east between Filton and Tormarton. I get to pass it every morning on the way to work. I assume they're waiting for a specialist contractor to find a way of doing NDT on a twenty-metre long truss structure - can't be many of them on standby.
What's interesting to me is how much the structure is hogging on the truck - it's got to be 10 degrees out of horizontal between the end and the midpoint. My rudimentary (for a civil engineer...) knowledge of structures would suggest it is designed to sag level under self-weight when supported from the ends, as opposed to it having been bent upwards by the empty tipper bed. It would not inspire public confidence if it was manufactured straight, then allowed to sag upon installation under cantilever effect...
Say, what "ghost slip road"?
Fantasy Strip Map Creator- feel free to send me some requests!
As a wise roadie said, don't make any mistakes in building roads.
DB617 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 09, 2023 22:04
If anyone wants a look, the unfortunate M5 gantry is currently parked on its rescue flatbed trailer in the 'ghost slip road' on the M4 east between Filton and Tormarton. I get to pass it every morning on the way to work. I assume they're waiting for a specialist contractor to find a way of doing NDT on a twenty-metre long truss structure - can't be many of them on standby.
What's interesting to me is how much the structure is hogging on the truck - it's got to be 10 degrees out of horizontal between the end and the midpoint. My rudimentary (for a civil engineer...) knowledge of structures would suggest it is designed to sag level under self-weight when supported from the ends, as opposed to it having been bent upwards by the empty tipper bed. It would not inspire public confidence if it was manufactured straight, then allowed to sag upon installation under cantilever effect...
DB617 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 09, 2023 22:04
If anyone wants a look, the unfortunate M5 gantry is currently parked on its rescue flatbed trailer in the 'ghost slip road' on the M4 east between Filton and Tormarton. I get to pass it every morning on the way to work. I assume they're waiting for a specialist contractor to find a way of doing NDT on a twenty-metre long truss structure - can't be many of them on standby.
What's interesting to me is how much the structure is hogging on the truck - it's got to be 10 degrees out of horizontal between the end and the midpoint. My rudimentary (for a civil engineer...) knowledge of structures would suggest it is designed to sag level under self-weight when supported from the ends, as opposed to it having been bent upwards by the empty tipper bed. It would not inspire public confidence if it was manufactured straight, then allowed to sag upon installation under cantilever effect...
Bfivethousand wrote: ↑Mon Apr 10, 2023 23:39
A real doozie in Eccles this evening. No news on injuries but would clearly have been a major, major incident if anyone was upstairs.
fras wrote: ↑Tue Apr 11, 2023 00:20One has to wonder what that driver was smoking !
Perhaps they'd just forgotten it was a double decker ? I have heard of this happening alot. Especially on dead runs back to depots.
I think fras's point was that they should have remembered it was a double decker when it went clattering through the chains on the approach. They would have surely made a racket on the hollow metal roof of the bus.
Bfivethousand wrote: ↑Mon Apr 10, 2023 23:39
A real doozie in Eccles this evening. No news on injuries but would clearly have been a major, major incident if anyone was upstairs.
Same bridge as in June 2020, but in this case it was a Diamond bus from Bolton rather than a Go North West one. Both companies operate services through Eccles to the Trafford Centre. Diamond was also the operator of the vehicle involved in the 2020 Rochdale bridge strike alluded to below.
I have known this bridge since early childhood - it's under the Bridgewater Canal, just to the N of the Barton Swing Aqueduct - so it is difficult for me to put myself in the mindset of somebody who isn't aware of it. I find it baffling that any bus driver would wilfully ignore this at the junction (assuming it is still as shown on GSV), but having made several sweeps of the B5211 on GSV, I can't actually spot an advance warning. I am assumng the vehicle was running empty and has made a right turn into Barton Lane, although it is possible it has come straight across the junction, which certainly did have an advance warning in 2015 at least.
I've just had a further look on GSV which is now updated to 2021. The sign present in 2014 had still not been replaced by that point, and although I can't say for sure it hasn't been replaced since, I am doubtful.
What is extremely alarming about this one is the apparent speed the bus must have been travelling at, suggesting to me the driver had mometarily convinced himself he was driving a single-decker. I've taken empty single-deckers under the bridge myself on the odd occasion, but the working practices at that operator (the notorious UK North) meant I was workng the same school run for a period of several months at a time, and as that one was exclusively a single-deck turn there was no chance of confusion.
