surely this is a good idea that doesn’t have the capacity to end real fuckin badly
Bridges aren’t supposed to have weight restrictions on them. That is, they don’t come with weight restrictions on them when they’re new. So a bridge with a weight restriction on it is a sign that something has gone wrong and the bridge does not meet current standards.
The maximum weight that a vehicle is allowed to carry on the Interstate System per federal law is 80,000 pounds gross vehicle weight (with a max of 20,000 pounds per axle). That’s 40 tons. That limit applies to every inch of pavement, not just the bridges. Since this is a known cap, a new Interstate bridge will be designed to accommodate an 80,000 lb GVW load on it. You could say the bridge’s weight limit is 80,000 lb/40 tons but that doesn’t really have much meaning, because a load higher than that would be illegal to transport on public roads anyway, and the road leading up to the bridge has the same weight restriction. (In practice, the bridge doubtlessly will be designed to have a little bit of let to it just in case some idiot tries to squeak by a few hundred extra pounds.)
Now, note that that law applies to the Interstate System only, because the federal government only has a governing interest in the Interstate System (and other roads that together make up something called the National Highway System) because they partially fund it. Most long-distance roads are owned and funded by the states. The states could theoretically set lower standard weight limits and/or design bridges with lower weight limits…but in practice they don’t.
One, because all of that 80,000 lb GVW traffic on the Interstate system has to go somewhere when it exits the system.
Two, because a group called the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO, who are best known for picking the road numbers) maintains a catalog of standard components for making bridges that meet Interstate System requirements. Engineers are expensive on a per-hour basis, so if you can direct your engineer to use standard components and make a standard bridge, that’s a lot cheaper than having them design a bridge from scratch to go over the creek in Nowheresville. As a result, most new bridges meet Interstate standards and have an 80,000 lb GVW rating even if they aren’t on the Interstate system. (This is also why all new bridges kind of look the same, but we’re not worried about how boring the bridges are for the sake of this post.)
So a bridge only has an explicit weight limit if it has been damaged in some way (through failure to properly maintain it usually) or because it predates the application of Interstate System standards and the standard AASHTO bridges.
Older bridges often have other problems in addition to the weight limits: many older designs are what we call “fracture critical”, which means that if one component of the bridge fails the whole thing collapses. Modern bridge designs have redundancy designed into them so that if one beam fails the other beams will carry the load until the damaged beam can be replaced. Older bridges also often don’t meet other standards, like height (16 ft clearance) and width (12 ft per lane plus 14 ft for shoulders) requirements.
Biden isn’t advocating eliminating weight limits and letting it be a laissez-faire free-for-all where trucks can just go wherever they want. He’s advocating for replacing bridges that carry weight limits with new ones that don’t have them.
wow i got absolutely schooled thank you for all this this is really informative. i have learned so much
This is a great explanation of what the fuck Biden was talking about in his tweet. because I will freely admit that I also went “…….wtf?????” when I read it. So thank you.
Listen, you should never film strangers in public without their consent, but I swear there need to be fines or something for people who do that shit in some spaces. For example: I had to go to the ER last night, and some jerk filmed a woman who just came in and was clearly having an asthma attack. She immediately got to go back, and he was unhappy about that. Believe me, I get that it sucks having to wait when you’re in pain, but you don’t get to pick who deserves care when. The medical system in the US is a nightmare, and the ER could be the worst moment of someone’s life. No one deserves to be recorded because some jack ass believes someone doesn’t look like they need care.
This is fine to reblog. People who film strangers should be shamed if nothing else.
I know a lot of EFR instructors (Emergency first response, the people who teach CPR classes) who used to be ambivalent about this and now are firmly in the “fuck you fuck your phone category.
Maybe its demographics, EFR instructors do tend to be older and less online, but there’s been a shift from voyeur filming being seen as irritating and tasteless to actively harmful.
I met one lady who had an entire section of her lecture based on how to divide labor in emergency and one of those steps was crowd control. If you are taking charge of an emergency situation, you delegate tasks. Point at one person and tell them to call 911, Point at another person tell them to warn traffic, Point at another person tell them to get the first aid kit if you know where it is. You assign small tasks to individuals instead of asking a crowd that way the task actually happens, and you’re not sitting around 20 minutes later wondering why the ambulance is taking so long to show up and it turns out that everyone assumed someone else called.
Now there is another step. Pick a big dude and tell him to stop people from filming. Which is actually the tamest version of what she said, because this lady went on and on about how phones are fragile, light, small, pieces of computer equipment that can be easily punted into oblivion.
And yeah, she’s probably the most vocal proponent of property destruction in the face of voyeur filming I’ve heard lately but she’s far from the only person in emergency services who’s frustrated with the eternal quest for viral videos of strangers pain.
And to be clear there is a huge difference between the paramedic who doesn’t want you filming and the cop who doesn’t want you filming.
I saw
everyone on twitter tearing Emma Watson apart for saying she’s self
- partnered instead of
single and decided to watch her interview for British Vogue to know what the
hell was she trying to say with that. I was very surprised to find a 30 minute video
in which amongst other things she talks about the following:
She felt undeserving when she was appointed
as UN Women goodwill ambassador and sought out Gloria Steinem to learn about
feminist activism.
She thinks the criticism
she received for being a white feminist was useful because it made her educate
herself.
She says there’s a
desperate need to reform the education system in the UK to change the way they
are taught the history of how Britain has been involved in foreign affairs and how
they profited from slavery.
She felt anxious about approaching
30 because there’s a lot of pressure to have a husband and a baby by then and
she’s still figuring her life out.
She was so young when
she was casted in Harry Potter that she doesn’t remember much of her life
before it and she went to therapy to deal with her issues with fame. She used
to feel very guilty for being unhappy because she thought she should enjoy fame
more.
The interviewer is a
transgender woman and they discuss transgender issues for a while. Emma is in
regular contact with a trans child which makes the topic of trans rights emotional for her because she’s very anxious for this kid’s safety.
She talks about her role
as Meg March in the new Little Women movie and defends that unlike what many
people say choosing to be a wife and a mother doesn’t make Meg a less feminist
character and quotes a line from the movie, “Just because my dreams are
different than yours it doesn’t mean they are unimportant.”
She wishes more people would
realize she’s not Hermione Granger but also understands why they want to see
that in her because Hermione is a symbol for her too.
She used to think she
could never be happy without a partner and now that she has learnt to navigate
that better and is genuinely happy single she’s started to think of herself as
self - partnered in contrast to the time when she thought of herself as single
= lonely.
Every media outlet decided
to focus in an out of context quote from the three minutes she talked about her
dating life when the actual interview had a lot of depth and way more important
things were discussed. I’m sad and angry but not surprised.
17-19 is the weirdest age range to be because. youngest of the adults oldest of the kids. everyone asks about college. can’t drink yet. who do i hang out with in family gatherings.
