"Can Opener" Bridge Keeps Claiming Dumb People, Despite It Being Raised

A classic "Penske Peel" at the infamous 11 foot 8 bridge in Durham,
North Carolina. They recently raised the bridge by eight inches, so now
it's the 11 foot 8+8 bridge. Still, dumb people are still crashing into it. 

There's a train tressle in Durham,  North Carolina with a street going under it.  I'm an absolutely huge fan of it.

The span was always known as the 11 foot 8 bridge, as that was the distance between the pavement on the street and the bottom of the bridge.

The bridge became an internet celebrity over the past decade or so due to the extremely high number of trucks that got their tops ripped off because truck drivers insisted on trying to make it under the span, despite the fact they couldn't fit.

This, despite all kinds of signs and sensor-triggered flashing lights and "Overheight Must Turn" signage that told truck drivers they won't fit under the bridge so stop. They'd keep going anyway, with disastrous results.

People in a nearby building have dutifully documented the carnage over the years with a surveillance camera.  It's turned into an extremely popular YouTube site.

I confess I was a little crushed, pardon the pun, when the fine people of Durham decided to raise the bridge by eight inches in the hopes of stopping this stupidity.   I get it that the overheight crashes were a pain in the ass for Durham police, public works and all that.

But I figured the idiot truck drivers deserved the public shame of crashing into this bridge an I hoped it would continue.

I, and many other people thought it was the end of the fun videos associated with the 11 foot 8 bridge.

But nope! It's now the 11 foot 8+8 bridge and people are still, gloriously crashing into it. Granted, the raised height of the bridge means the crashes aren't quite as dramatic as they used to be. But happily, they continue.

So here's to the stupid truck drivers everywhere who insist on crashing into things they need not crash into!

Videos of recent crashes of the 11 foot 8+8 bridge here:

First one is a piece of furniture being knocked off a truck on December 19. It features the walk of shame of the driver who had to retrieve it:



Then, we have the ever-popular "Penske Peel" with the top of a Penske rental truck being damaged. Penske peels have always been popular here:

Ingenious Idea: Truckers Park Under Bridge To Prevent Suicide

Tractor trailer trucks park beneath a bridge long I-696 in Detroit to
prevent a suicidal man from getting hurt if he jumped off the bridge. 

A guy in Detroit this week was going to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge and onto busy I-696.

Police were called to try to negotiate with the guy to make him change his mind. That part of the story is unfortunately common. Happens all the time.

But the part of this story I - and pretty much the rest of social media and the public in general likes - is another way police and semi-truck drivers cooperated to prevent the suicide.

The cops closed the highway to traffic, except for 13 semi-truck drivers, who they let through. The catch was, the 13 truck drivers would park cheek-by-jowl under the bridge. If the guy did jump, he'd land on the roof of one of the trucks, which were only a few feet below the bridge. If the guy jumped, he probably wouldn't have even gotten hurt.

After a few hours, the suicidal guy agreed to give up and go to the hospital for an evaluation.

Obnoxious Pickup Truck Drivers Still Blasting Out Clouds Of Smoke Because It's Fun! (Idiots)

Big trucks "rolling coal" emitting huge clouds
 of black smoke. Healthy and not adding
pollution to the atmosphere, right? 

There's one in every crowd. Or several.

Certain people on the road want to be more obnoxious than everyone else.

It's a competition, you see.

One bit of obnoxiousness that's been popular for a few years is a phenomenon called "rolling coal."

Young men, almost alll of them losers with very small dicks who are overcompensating, trick out their big he-man pickup trucks with a smoke stack and mechanical stuff that lets these morons trick the engine to need more fuel.

The result is a burst of black smoke that has bystanders choking on the fumes, other drivers blinded by the clouds, and these losers laughing hysterically. Because they're too stupid to laugh at anything else, I guess.

To get the very limited mentality of people who like to roll coal, all you have to do is go to the dialogue in a November, 2015 report from NPR member station KUNC in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Reporter Stephanie Paige Ogburn starts"

Ogburn: "If you've never heard of rolling coal, Jake Rogakis can explain it in one sentence."
Rogakis: "To roll coal is to pretty much just floor it and blow as much black smoke as you possibly can."
Ogburn: "Rogakis has tuned his diesel engine so that he can blow clouds of thick black smoke from his tailpipe on purpose."
Rogakis: "It's just fun. Like, go drive my truck. You'll have a blast, guaranteed."

Ogburn goes on to explain that Rogakis is one of about 100 guys hanging around a Fort Collins strip mall, mostly to compare notes on their big trucks and their rolling coal contraptions.

I really hope Fort Collins is so boring people are reduced to doing this, but my guess is the problem is not really Fort Collins, but these young guys without imagination.

Ogburn asked Brock Anderson and Cory Wiggins, who were in another group from Rogakis at that Fort Collins parking lot, why coal rolling is so popular.

Anderson: "I'm not sure. It's - you know, why do people do a lot of things, you know what I mean? It's 'cause everybody's doing it."
Wiggins: "You also get more power, and it's just something cool. Ladies like it."
Anderson: (laughing) "No, I don't know if women like that."
Wiggins: "No, all ladies love it."
Anderson: "No"

I'm with Brock here. Notice how delusional Cory is. He thinks he's such a lady killer with his black smoke and his presumably teeny tiny, um, anatomy.  By the way, Brock Anderson is fairly reasonable. Unlike some of his friends, he says he only does this out on the farm, with nobody around, so nobody gets a cloud of black smoke in their face.

My guess is most women, and most people for that matter, actually don't like rolling coal.  Guys, don't date the few women in the world who like rolling coal!

Anyway, let's go on.

Let's get back to our friend Jake Rogakis, who loves his rolling coal truck.

He says he doesn't envelop people in smoke, "Unless they, like do something to make me mad, cut me off."

There ya go, Jake. They cut you off, you blind them with smoke and have them crash into somebody else. Real considerate of you.

Rogakis, like many coal rollers, has a particular enmity against bicyclist. It seems all these guys with big trucks hate bicyclists.

"If you see a bike, you just can't help but to do it. No matter how many times you do it, every single time, you'll still get a smile on your face."

Yeah, blinding bicyclists in choking smoke and making them inhale potentially cancer causing and lung disease causing diesel particles is a real laff riot.

A bicycle tour group from Canada was recently the victim of some idiot repeatedly rolling coal with his big nasty truck in otherwise scenic north-central Vermont, says the Burlington Free Press.

One of the tour group members, Steven Fischer, said his group was blasted by the truck, then it came back.

"Ten minutes later it was my turn. The truck - at least I think it was the same one, but I can't be certain - pulled up beside me and unleashed another black cloud."

This, not surprisingly, is not the first time bicyclists in Vermont or elsewhere been tormented by those idiots rolling coal.

The Free Press quoted Phyl Newbeck of the Green Mountain Bicycle Club who said he's been blasted by these idiots.

By the way, if you were thinking this rolling coal stuff is illegal, it is. It violates the federal Clean Air Act. Plus federal and many state guidelines prohibit altering vehicle exhaust systems like the rolling coal boneheads do.

Of course, it's hard to catch all these idiots because you can't read the license plates through all that smoke.

So, we can only hope for karma for these small dicked diesel dumbasses. They deserve a good asthma attack, or a little bit of lung disease, maybe?

That's mean, but karma's tough, you know.

Here's a video of a motorist haveing to deal with some idiot "rolling coal" in Essex Junction, Vermont:

Bridge Enforces Laws Of Physics Despite Best Efforts Of Truck Drivers

One of many trucks that tried and failed
to violate teh laws of physics by going into an
underpass that's not as tall as the truck. 

There's a bridge in Durham, North Carolina that is a graveyard for stupid truck drivers, and a source of shadenfreude entertainment for the rest of us.

Cars can fit just fine getting through the underpass beneath the bridge, which is really a train trestle.

But the bottom of the bridge is 11 feet, eight inches above the roadway, meaning it's trouble for trucks. (Technically the space is 11 feet, 10 inches, but they try to give people two inches of wiggle room, just to be generous. )

There's a number of warning signs and lights alerting drivers to the low clearance ahead, but somehow,  people driving trucks, especially inexperienced people driving rental trucks, just don't get it.

There's a whole website, called 11 foot 8, dedicated to all the stupid truck drivers who tried to get under the bridge,  Proprietors of the web site have recorded no fewer than 97 trucks smashing into the bridge.

As the web site notes:

"The train trestle prominently featured in all the videos here has earned a reputation for its unrelenting enforcement of the lawes of physics. If your vehicle is taller than 11 feet, eight inches, and you challenge this bridge, you might find ootage of your experience on this website."

Somehow, this bridge or train trestle insists on adhering to the laws of physics. Go figure.

The website says trucks crash into the bridge on average once a month. At least once a day, a truck trips overhead warning lights which makes them stop in time and turn around.

They can't simply block the road from trucks, because as you can see in the video below, there's a cross street right before the bridge. There are several businesses and restaurants on that cross street that need access by delivery trucks.

As long as those delivery trucks don't go straight into the underpass, no problem.

Here's a video of a bunch of crashes at the trestle through May, 2013. There's a LOT of them. People never learn, do they?