Chesapeak Bay Bridge from afar

Wednesday, July 24, 2013 |



Sigh. I've been quiet lately on the bridge trek front. It's been hard to get excited after walking then driving across the Golden Gate Bridge late last year. But I've got to note last week's accident on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, where a driver and her car, following a collision with a truck, got thrown over the bridge and then down 27 feet to the water, which apparently was 10 feet deep at that point. Fortunately,  the amazingly resourceful driver survived by crawling out of her car and swimming to the surface and then to some rocks.

Several days after the accident, the media coverage continues. Yesterday there was a front-page article in the Washington Post entitled "Long before crash, drive on Bay Bridge could scare," by Ashley Halsey III, documenting how many drivers have long been scared of driving across that bridge. Then I continue with the article to page 4 of the hardcopy Post, where there was another article entitled "How to flee a car that's underwater," written by Julie Zauzmer, where I guess I learn how to survive in the extremely unlikely event that my car is pushed over a bridge, I stay conscious upon hitting the water, and then land in shallow enough water to actually swim to the surface. (Perhaps I'm more likely to accidentally drive into my neighbor's pool.) And perhaps we'll be hearing more about the Chesapeake Bay Bridge accident, as Ms. Halsey documents how AAA has asked federal experts to assess whether the barriers on that bridge are high enough. Yes, the Bay Bridge is very scary. There's a reason we haven't honored this bridge with a bridge drive--it's simply above our scale of scary. I can't say that all the coverage has helped make it less scary, although I don't actually make a connection between a freak accident and scariness.