Last night’s big rig plunge off the Bay Bridge, which happened at 3:30 a.m. when a semi with a load of pears hit the infamous S-curve too fast, was only the latest of more than forty accidents on the suddenly jinxed bridge, the CHP said, as reported by KTVU TV’s website.
The truck hit the curve at 50 m.p.h., which is the speed limit for much of the bridge, but not for the S-curve, a temporary detour installed over the Labor Day weekend as part of the decade-long Bay Bridge earthquake retrofit project. After a big rig crashed on the curve Oct. 14, spilling cargo across four lanes, CalTrans lowered the speed limit on the curve to 35 m.p.h. and installed new signs, but evidently they weren’t enough to draw the attention of a sleepy produce truck driver in the middle of the night.
The driver was killed when the truck went over the guardrail and plunged 200 feet to the ground on the shore of Yerba Buena Island.
Quoted in the SFGate.com story, a CalTrans spokesman blamed the driver, saying the crash was “another example of poor judgment.”
A reel of “raw video” on the KPIX website shows the impact scene before dawn, including a grotesque image of the driver’s severed forearm and hand.
