Driver killed in tunnel by falling conduit 1

[bridgebuster]

I use this tunnel on a regular basis and never thought twice about the overhead conduits or jet fans.

Link

This is on the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike; north of Allentown.

 

[3DDave]

Overdriveonline has photos on the page. There is a small hole at the top of the driver's side windshield.

 

[JStephen]

When I was a kid, a person was killed at the local highschool football stadium when they ran off the road, hit the chainlink fence around the stadium, and the top rail on that fence speared the driver. I don't guess there's a good way to go, but some seem more gruesome than others.

And that reminds me of another incident, where my employer at the time had a trackhoe on the right-of-way to a local 2-lane highway. It was out by the fenceline, maybe 20' off the pavement. But in the middle of the night, somebody ran off the road and hit the counterweight on that trackhoe. When the workers got out there the next morning, they said there was still hair and blood on that counterweight.

 

I thought the concrete sections falling in Boston were the decorative liner (tiles ?) of the top of the tunnel, not the structural tunnel liner itself.

If they had lined the entire tunnel with $100 bills it would have been not only safer but cheaper.

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

 

[bimr]

And that reminds me of another incident:

A German tourist was killed when a car jack his automobile ran over tore through the floorboard and impaled him, police said Monday. Dietrich Alt, 46, of Herzogenaurach Hammerbach, Germany, was driving west on Interstate 80 in northeastern Nevada with his wife and two children when the accident occurred Sunday, the Nevada Highway Patrol said. As the car drove over the jack, the tool flipped up and punctured the car's floorboard, tore through the driver's seat and impaled Alt through the groin area. Alt was able to pull off the road and remove the jack, but he collapsed on the highway and died.

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1991-08-13/news/9108130612_1_impaled-alt-floorboard

Sometimes people are just unlucky.

 

[LionelHutz]

Was this an empty conduit? I don't see how an end of the conduit could drop very far if there were wires inside. I've seen conduits where lengths of it (20-30') were unsecured and they didn't fall, only drooped in the middle still basically hanging from the wires inside. I would hope that level of disrepair would be noticed.