Sometimes, all it takes is the smallest of miscalculations:
It was just six inches.
That was what made the difference at 4:40 a.m. yesterday as Gilberto Cantu, a truck driver from Texas, approached the New Jersey entrance of the Lincoln Tunnel in his big rig, loaded with bathtubs, toilets and plumbing fixtures. The truck was 13 feet 6 inches high. The tunnel has a height limit of 13 feet. Six inches can make a big difference.
Mr. Cantu drove the entire 1.5 miles of the tunnel from Weehawken, N.J., to Manhattan, tearing his way under the Hudson River in the tunnel?s center tube and peeling back the roof of his tractor-trailer as if it were a tin can. No one was injured, but an undetermined number of decorative tunnel ceiling tiles were ripped off.
It was unclear why Mr. Cantu did not heed warnings from flashing signs and a loudspeaker in New Jersey, said Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the tunnel. ?There were enough bells and whistles going off that this should not have happened,? Mr. Coleman said. ?He told the officers he didn?t know where he was going.?
Mr. Coleman said that accidents of this kind were almost always averted. When a too-tall vehicle enters the toll plaza, an electronic sensor is tripped, several stoplights are activated and police officers at the plaza use a loudspeaker to order the driver to stop.
Mr. Coleman said trucks were turned back for exceeding the height limit about once a week. And on the rare occasions when trucks have entered and scraped the tunnel?s ceiling, their drivers have invariably stopped, he said, and the police have employed a height-reducing technique of letting air out of the trucks? tires so they could be backed out.
Would’ve been a heck of alot less expensive to do that, don’t you think.
Picture below the fold.
Update: Welcome Instapundit and Irish Trojan readers !
June 1st, 2007 at 4:48 pm
Nice “Get Smart” reference, Doug. Wonder how many in the blogosphere are old enough to recognize it?
June 2nd, 2007 at 8:08 am
I’d like to know a lot more about the Mysterious Mr. Cantu.
- What is his nationality and immigration status?
- How could he have not understood the road rules?
- Didn’t he HEAR anything?
Or is this a tractor trailer dry run for clogging the tubes as part of a terrorist attack?
June 2nd, 2007 at 8:18 am
If you rent a truck in Cambridge or Boston Massachusetts, you are apt to see on the wall behind the desk a similar warning picture of a rental truck with its roof peeled back. “Don’t Drive on Storrow Drive!” is the caption, referring to the parkway (and major commuter route) along the Boston side of the Charles River with notoriously low clearances.
Of course, one expects amateur drivers of rental trucks to be bone-heads ignorant of clearance issues. It’s hard to believe that Mr. Cantu could have been sober, but on the other hand, he surely must have taken a sobriety test after this incident, and one expects any failure would have been reported.
June 2nd, 2007 at 8:26 am
At least one more.
June 2nd, 2007 at 8:31 am
He’s probably not really from Texas. He’s probably an illegal alien.
June 2nd, 2007 at 8:33 am
TO: Doug Mataconis, et al.
RE: [OT] Double-Standards of Government
What struck me about this matter is that in this instance the government is all too happy to give us the name of the dweeb who, in the face of all these pro-active warnings failed to comply with them and wound up with a personal disaster on his hands.
On the other hand, we discovered, yesterday, that a similar series of pro-active were given to a government Border Patrol guard to tell him to stop TB Andy from (1) entering the country and (2) protect himself against possible infection of a terrible form of TB.
And yet, the government, doing CYA, doesn’t tell us the name of THEIR dweeb.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Government has come to be a trade, and is managed solely on commercial principles. A man plunges into politics to make his fortune, and only cares that the world should last his days. — Ralph Waldo Emerson]
June 2nd, 2007 at 8:43 am
Maybe the reason he didn’t heed the warnings is that he doesn’t understand English well?
June 2nd, 2007 at 8:51 am
I’m 26 and I get it. My favorite show, though.
June 2nd, 2007 at 9:00 am
I caught the Get Smart reference immediately. I guess that makes me older ‘n dirt.
June 2nd, 2007 at 9:03 am
I am, I am. I recognize that reference.
Driver Cantu was overheard talking to his boss, he said “Sorry about that, Chief”.
June 2nd, 2007 at 9:10 am
Rumor has it that there is going to be a “Get Smart” movie which may introduce the young whippersnappers to the classics.
Alan
Age 58?
June 2nd, 2007 at 9:13 am
[…] Details. […]
June 2nd, 2007 at 9:37 am
Now you need to work in “that’s the second biggest XXXXX I’ve ever seen!”
I saw Get Smart in reruns.
June 2nd, 2007 at 9:39 am
Been there. Done that.
I had a summer job in college driving for a plumbing supply company. We had a truck with an 11 foot high body. One day about three weeks into the job I took a ’short cut’ on a road with a railroad bridge that had a 10′ 10″ clearance.
The damage was not as bad as the picture, but it was bad enough. Same peeling sensation and all. I was immediately given an opportunity to “re-examine my career choices and goals”.
June 2nd, 2007 at 10:25 am
This happens maybe once a week on Storrow Drive in Boston. All the entrance ramps have large, gaudy signs, often enhanced with flashing lights and pipes suspended at 11′ over the road bed, stating that no trucks are allowed and why not. Before the underpasses, there are always more signs urgently requiring trucks to exit.
I hear now and then about how some Mensa members drive trucks for a living. It is clear to me that not all truck drivers would qualify. That would explain why most of the signs on the underpasses have serious dents on them.
June 2nd, 2007 at 11:26 am
Would you believe a metric conversion error?
June 2nd, 2007 at 1:38 pm
Of course! The old peel-back-the-roof-of-my-trailer-so-nobody-knows-I-was-running-late trick!
June 2nd, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Why don’t roads with low clearances have, in addition to the current signs and warnings, a “warning pipe” suspended above the road at the correct height in order to hit too-tall vehicles? I’d rather have someone run into a pipe suspended on a chain than have them jam themselves into a tunnel. Much less cost and invonvenience!
June 2nd, 2007 at 1:52 pm
So, the old truck-peeler-in-the-tunnel trick!
“Rumor has it that there is going to be a ‘Get Smart’ movie which may introduce the young whippersnappers to the classics.”
Is there anybody in Hollywood with the brains to even come close to Mel Brooks’ gift for the absurd in the original series? And, how could it be recast? Gods help us all if Adam Sandler, Jim Carrey, or one of their ilk got the title role.
June 2nd, 2007 at 1:53 pm
These low bridges/tunnels need a simple compound-barrier … if the “pipes suspended 11′ over the road” is stiffly-linked to a see-saw 20++ feet ahead, as the truck hits the 11′-pipe, the far end of the see-saw drops, lowering a STOP-NOW sign directly in front of the truck’s windshield … to continue, the truck would have to plow through the sign, hitting his windshield. (Make the sign hinged/soft to avoid excess damage)
June 2nd, 2007 at 3:03 pm
If it’s any consolation, for all practical purposes this ends his OTR driving career. “Topping a trailer” not only goes on his DMV, but on his DAC report (kinda like a credit reporting service for Commercial Drivers). No reputable company will hire him, because no insurer will extend coverage. Of course, NYC is lousy with substandard and outlaw carriers that he could drive for. But they’re local, and know the low clearances.
June 2nd, 2007 at 3:34 pm
Once again, the tunnel has prevailed against the evil forces of SEMI and peeled the roof back on their insidious tunnel-clogging plans…
Oops. Sorry, wrong number.
(Haven’t seen the show in years. Too bad the DVDs are so ridiculously expensive…)
June 2nd, 2007 at 4:11 pm
“Why don?t roads with low clearances have, in addition to the current signs and warnings, a ?warning pipe? suspended above the road at the correct height in order to hit too-tall vehicles?” — KSM
Before Hwy 59 in Houston was rebuilt a few years ago, there were a series of low bridges (still over 13′) over one part of it. About 200 yards before the first one, a bunch of short pipes were dangled vertically from an overhead bar; in addition to the warning signs and lights, they served as the last line of defense before the first of the bridges. Several times a year some idiot would get past everything and slam the underside of the first bridge. Over the years, it was damaged so badly that traffic over it had be restricted to one lane on the far (undamaged) side of the bridge.
The name of the street, and therefore the bridge?
Hazard.
(Side note: Lots of Cantu’s in Houston. There’s even a moving company by that name.)
June 2nd, 2007 at 6:14 pm
A squad of terrorist ripped the top of my truck off, would you believe it?
No?
Would you believe 6 juvenile delinquents with a cutting torch?
No?
How about a low tunnel and a stigmatism?
June 2nd, 2007 at 8:26 pm
What if there was a big ol’ nuke or conventional bomb in that truck.
Maybe this IS a dry run.
June 2nd, 2007 at 9:02 pm
“Don’t tell me the bridge is too low.”
“The bridge is too low, Max.”
“I asked you not to tell me that, 99.”
Come on, give the guy some slack, he’s gotta right to drive his truck wherever he wants. Look for the ACLU to weigh in on this one.
June 2nd, 2007 at 9:33 pm
I knew a guy named Cantu (as a last name). Long term American family. From Louisiana.
June 2nd, 2007 at 9:49 pm
It’s like the old joke: “I don’t see any cops around, let’s go for it!”
June 3rd, 2007 at 12:11 am
What language is flashing lights and sirens in?
June 3rd, 2007 at 2:53 pm
Mohjho:
I’m pretty sure that the stigmatism part only comes after the tunnel.
June 3rd, 2007 at 3:25 pm
?Why don?t roads with low clearances have, in addition to the current signs and warnings, a ?warning pipe? suspended above the road at the correct height in order to hit too-tall vehicles?? ? KSM
As others have noted, Storrow & Memorial Drives in Boston have low clearances and they do, indeed, have rubber-bottomed signs suspended at the appropriate heights at the on-ramps. A few years ago I was walking over the spot where Mem Drive goes under Mass Ave and saw a speeding box-truck clock one of these hanging signs and disappear beneath my feet. I thought for half a second “they must exaggerate those signs a bit, since the truck made it” and then I heard a huge griding sound. A quick look from the other side of the road showed the truck firmly wedged in the underpass, with 3 starburst patterns on the windshield, where the passengers were taught a quick physics lesson (always wear your seatbelt, kids =). The cops were still trying to get the truck out several hours later when I was heading back the other way.
June 12th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
Dumb shit!
July 4th, 2007 at 12:01 am
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