“Portland’s St. John’s Bridge and the Lewis & Clark Bridge connecting Oregon and Washington are among the seven bridges on the list.”
“Portland’s St. John’s Bridge and the Lewis & Clark Bridge connecting Oregon and Washington are among the seven bridges on the list.”
Isn’t this just fearmongering?
Beeing afraid of bridges that don’t stand the impact of a containership crash? Crashproofing bridges? What cost to cover what probability?
No. Bridges built in modern times have protection against such incidents and as the Baltimore event demonstrated, for very good reason. They make barriers around the piers to absorb and impact and wow - who would have known - avoid the bridge collapsing.
I wouldn’t say fear mongering and much as ignorance.
Most things bridges, dams, etc would fail if hit by a modern container ship. These ships are massive. It’s basic physics.
9/11 people were shocked since they thought the towers were designed to survive a plane hit. What they didn’t get is that modern planes are much larger, which more fuel and more speed.
Many people don’t think about large objects in terms of mass, momentum, statics very often. Even though are right calling it basic physics. The lack of practice in this kind of “physics thinking” results in a lack of knowledge and intuition about, lets say, ship VS. bridge. I wouldn’t call that ignorance, because having “basic knowledge, practice and intuition” about each of the main scientific disciplines requires quite a lot of time and besides that, being quite a gigantic nerd. At least thats what I feel like.
People knowing about their fields of responsibility and interest is fine, I guess. They still deserve being informed about everything else in a helpful way. Like, compensate their lack of nerdyness with proper fluffin’ journalism! That’s what this trade is meant to do.
That’s what ignorance is. It’s not knowing something. That is the literal definition of the word. I’m ignorant on repairing airplane engines. Nothing wrong with being ignorant on something but don’t try to write an article about it.