Why do people say "I can never conceive of this happening here" as if the United States is some golden haven of engineering perfection? It's tragic, but bridges do fall down. What's more amazing - and harder to conceive - is the number of times things go right; that bridges stay up, tunnels don't fall on people, and buildings tend to stay built. There are so many possibilities for error, and, given the track record of your average human being, that this sort of thing doesn't happen far more often is the more wondrous thing.
I suppose I focus on this sort of thing - the engineering failure itself, not tragic loss of life - often enough that it doesn't faze me. Specifically with bridges. In fact, I'd be hard pressed to think of a time where I drove over a span of any decent size without thinking about exactly that scenario.
I think this mostly relates back to a time when the Mass Ave bridge was closed because it was of the same construction as several bridges in CT that had catastrophic failures. Perhaps it also has something to do with two friends being swallowed up the Charles River, trapped in their cars, in two separate incidents 4 years apart.
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