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This is why I'm glad I almost never have to take the Leverett Connector
By adamg on Mon, 03/19/2007 - 10:15am
Car plunges to gravel site from ramp, killing man (although the absolute worst roadway in America for us acrophobes has to be the High Bridges into Charleston, SC - shudder!).
Disclosure: Back when I worked at a daily newspaper, I programmed our wire-service story-alert system to notify me whenever Associated Press moved a story about bus plunges - with which I would then compile the weekly newsroom bus-plunge tally-o-matic. I recently read some story bemoaning the end of bus-plunge stories, but I see that there are still plenty of bus plunges.
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Comments
For the record...
The guy flew off the Route 1 loop, not the Leverett Connector. I worked on the northern-most portion of the Leverett Connector ramps, north of the Gilmore Bridge. No one's taken a nose dive off of there yet. Though we did have a guy attempt suicide by jumping off I-93, into our jobsite underneath next to the commuter rail tracks one day.
He missed a chain-link fence by a couple feet, landing on hard-packed dirt.
Dude was messed up pretty bad, but very much conscious.
As to the guy in the winged Camry, I'll go waaaaaaaay out on a limb and say the guy was likely exceeding the posted speed limit.
True, not the Connector
But all part of the same big bowl of very high spaghetti - and yeah, the guy was probably going a tad faster than the speed limit.
Big Dig Factoid of the Day
The concrete barriers on the sides of the Leverett Connector ramp were built too short. The shop drawing that was approved for construction showed the roadway to barrier height without the final concrete roadway surface in place. When that 4" layer was placed, all the barriers along that stretch were suddenly too short to meet the safety requirement to keep cars from doing a General Lee off the ramp.
Hence, the steel rail that you see now, bolted to the top of the barrier.
When I first heard of ths incident, I immediately thought the car went over one of those sections.
DWHUA?
My bet is excessive speed BUT I'd also lay odds that snow plowed up against the sides may have modified the "flipover" properties of the barriers into "flyover" launch ramps.