Bridge strikes seem inexplicable and inexcusable, yet they keep happening. Although numbers are down a little since the turn of the century, and have been declining further over the past few years, there were still over 1,600 incidents in 2020/2021. That’s around one for every 10,000 vehicle miles driven.
There’s plenty of information out there on the subject. Network Rail’s Prevention of bridge strikes guidance for drivers is well worth a read, as is FORS’ Prevention of Bridge Strikes Toolkit. Both of these can be found online, via the links at the end of this article.
Today, however, our job is to look at what happens when a bridge is hit. Inspector Rik Wenham leads the Metropolitan Police’s Commercial Vehicle Unit (CVU) and regularly – too regularly – attends such incidents. Charlotte Le Maire, meanwhile, is a criminal lawyer with LMP Legal, and – also regularly – deals with the aftermath.
So have they ever heard of a good excuse from a driver who has hit a bridge? “The only acceptable reason we’ve come across is where the local authority has relaid the road surface, but not remeasured the bridge,” Wenham tells us. “This is one of the reasons we go to bridge strikes, and we do so with a very open mind.”
Brace yourself, there’s a rather hefty irony coming next. “It’s generally where they’ve repaired a diesel spill from a bridge strike,” Wenham says. “Planed a layer of tarmac off, put a new layer down and taken a couple of inches. And it will only be a couple of inches,” he continues. “But the last one we went to rolled a 44-tonner.”
That aside, most excuses are unconvincing, to say the least. “I’ve had things as ridiculous as ‘I thought there was some tolerance’,” Le Maire reveals. This is actually a really common one – we’ve come across many stories about bridges described with the phrase, “It’s marked as 14ft 3in, but we’ve been taking high trailers under it for years.”
“I’ve also had cases where they’ve positioned the vehicle badly, at bridges that are higher in the middle, and an inexperienced driver has moved over when something has been coming the other way,” Le Maire says. Being diverted, not seeing the signs, and agency drivers blaming operators for not warning them about the route are all on her list as well.
“One of the things we do when we attend an incident is a back-track of the driver’s route,” Wenham assures us. “To make sure the signs are there, correct and clean.
“We’ve had toe-to-toe discussions with drivers about it being the loaders’ responsibility to measure the height, not theirs,” he continues. “Or ‘the sat-nav sent me down this way’. That’s always a winner.”
“Sat-nav is a brilliant one,” Le Maire agrees. But really, as Wenham reminds us, it’s quite simple. “Ultimately it comes down to putting a lorry that’s too tall under a bridge that’s too small. That’s it.” Network Rail’s bridge strike prevention guidance gives four steps a driver should follow in the event of a bridge strike occurring. If a rail bridge is involved, the first thing is to report it to the rail authority immediately by contacting the number on the identification plate attached to all rail bridges. “Do not wait until you return to your depot before reporting the bridge strike,” the guidance states, categorically. The second step is to ring 999 and advise the police, and then only at the third step should the driver inform their employer. Step four says: “Keep the public away and do not move your vehicle.”
Somewhere along the line, if the bridge is inside their area, Inspector Wenham’s team will show up. “If it’s a railway bridge, there’ll be a stop put on all trains on that bridge until a surveyor has been sent out,” he tells us. “Which can be hours.” Unfortunately, time equals money in circumstances like this. “If it’s a main ‘red line’ into one of the London termini, Network Rail bills per 10 minutes,” Wenham warns.
But it doesn’t quite end there. “Then it’ll put the rails on ‘caution’, which can last anything from minutes to hours,” he continues. “But it’s still incurring delays on the service, which means it has to refund tickets. It has just had its first million-pound claim,” he adds. “Against a company that hit the main line into Paddington.”
The police will start by measuring the vehicle and measuring the bridge. “Nine times out of 10, it’s a big lorry in a small hole,” Wenham says. “That generally means charges of driving without due care and attention, and failing to comply with a height warning – potentially nine points on conviction.” We’re surprised it isn’t a full ban. “They rarely get banned unless they really smash the granny out of a bridge,” Wenham replies. “But then the traffic commissioner (TC) will generally assist them with some vocational annual leave.” He’s heard of suspensions as long as two years. “We advise companies to seek advice and self-refer to the TC,” he adds. “Because in nine out of 10 cases, a file will inevitably head that way.”
From an operator’s perspective, you need to be calling in legal help from someone like Le Maire as soon as possible after the event. “That’s what I’d prefer,” she says. “Drivers mostly do the right thing and report it straight away, although some do wait until they get back to depot.” As always, she advises drivers not to talk to the police without a legal representative present. “The difficulty with this versus any other road collision is that it’s there to be seen,” she concedes. “The lorry’s there – it’s hit the bridge.”
A lawyer will be looking at mitigation rather than defence for the most part. As well as ensuring Network Rail has been informed where relevant, the lawyer will also inform the TC. “We tell the TC we’re doing an internal investigation; then we tend to conduct that investigation for the operator,” Le Maire tells us. “I know some law firms work differently, and some operators want to do it all in-house and won’t seek a lawyer until they get called to a preliminary hearing,” she continues. “But I sometimes think that’s shutting the gate after the horse has bolted. We prefer to control that investigation and help paint a really positive picture, in the hope that we can avoid a preliminary or public enquiry.”
Now for the bad news. “My personal view – which I doubt will be popular with TCs – is that whatever the operator does, it doesn’t massively matter,” Le Maire says. “Because if that driver cannot appreciate simple maths – size of vehicle versus height of bridge – what is an employer supposed to do?” Despite this simple truth, however, operators still end up taking a proportion of the legal blame for that driver’s actions.
“I’ve dealt with a lot of these, and my sympathy often goes out to the employer,” she explains. “Most of the operators I deal with have done an awful lot towards bridge strike prevention, but it seems to me that when they go to a hearing, no matter how much training they’ve given drivers, there’s always something else they’re told they could have done.”
This can be anything from not having signs on the gate to remind drivers about low bridges as they leave the yard to not training agency drivers as much as employees. “Operators are terrified of going to the TC for this, because there are real sanctions,” Le Maire adds. “Most of those I’ve worked with, quite frankly, unless they had driven the vehicle themselves, I’m not sure what else they could have done.” The aim of the game, therefore, is to paint as positive a picture as possible, keeping any sanctions to a minimum. This is why it’s important to get legal advice immediately. “If the worst happens, it’s not the end of the world. We’re there to put the pieces back together,” Le Maire reassures us. “But trying, at the outset, to do all the right things, can pay a dividend later on, when maybe you don’t have to go to a public inquiry.”
For Wenham, meanwhile, there’s the small matter of getting the lorry removed from under the bridge. “Ultimately, that’ll be for the operator to sort out,” he says. “Although if it can’t be done within a reasonable amount of time, we’ll do it under police powers, which adds an extra cost.” The only exception to that is in more complicated cases. “We had one in South London where it had taken a container off a skeletal trailer,” Wenham tells us. “Then you’re talking cranes – and big money.”
Finally, Wenham and his team will conduct a company visit to look at the safe systems of working, such as whether the firm is supplying its drivers with a means to measure their loads. “The important thing to remember is that bridge strikes are 99.9% preventable,” Wenham reminds us. “But there was an incident in Boksburg in South Africa in 2022, where an LPG tanker got wedged under a bridge, and ended up killing 41 people.” He pauses, to let this sink in. “And that WAS caused by a driver ignoring the signs.”
This article was previoulsy published in Commercial Motor, to subscribe see the latest Commercial Motor subscription offer
