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Baltimore bridge collapses into river after being hit by cargo ship
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2024
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New bridges are built with protections such as pylons to prevent ships from even getting close to bumping into the bridge after the sunshine skyway bridge collapse of 1980.
In this case I'm not sure it would have mattered. This wasn't a bump or a glancing blow. There's not much which will deflect or absorb that much energy head on.
I disagree, the geometry of protection dolphins use would deflect the ship enough to change its trajectory towards the walls of the channel bed where the ship would run aground before striking the bridge even from a head on collision.
What is a geometry protection dolphin?
They are concrete or wooden structures that are piled deep into the ground like fondation foundation pylons on skyscrapers. The geometry part I was just referring to how they are angled in such a way it ricochets the ship away from the structure it's protecting or towards the channel.
So why on earth didn't the bridge have these?
If I had to speculate? Cost savings... The bridge already had a history of cost reductions such as originally being built with a shared approach way which vastly increased the risk of head on collisions.
So in their effort to save money, they got 6 people killed and now have to spend presumably much more on a whole new bridge...
Possibly but you have to keep in mind this bridge was designed in the late 60s when a lot of the safety regulations that were written in blood hadn't happened yet. The Florida state sunshine skyway bridge collapse wouldn't happen for over a decade after the Francis Scott Key bridge opened.
A. It did, just only a few and the investigation will probably reveal not enough based on giant ships these days.
B. It was built before the Sunshine bridge collapse in 1980 so before the standards were updated.
I believe it refers to this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin_(structure)
This makes a lot of sense, thanks for the insight!