To be “fair”, with how material exhaustion works, it could have totally been fine, as the bridge only would have bent and creaked beneath the guy, and then the next, under-weight-limit car would have fallen in.
Yeah you can destructively overload a structure a number of times before catastrophic failure unless you go way over. It may be internal stress but it can be as far as shearing a bolt or two. But each time you lower the load bearing capacity of the structure, and once that’s begun the structure is on borrowed time and you won’t notice until it’s too late unless you have regular inspections
The careful text-books measure (Let all who build beware!) The load, the shock, the pressure Material can bear. So, when the buckled girder Lets down the grinding span, The blame of loss, or murder, Is laid upon the man. Not on the Stuff — the Man!
Probably thought the weight limit was a suggestion and not a hard constraint. Yikes
To be “fair”, with how material exhaustion works, it could have totally been fine, as the bridge only would have bent and creaked beneath the guy, and then the next, under-weight-limit car would have fallen in.
Yeah you can destructively overload a structure a number of times before catastrophic failure unless you go way over. It may be internal stress but it can be as far as shearing a bolt or two. But each time you lower the load bearing capacity of the structure, and once that’s begun the structure is on borrowed time and you won’t notice until it’s too late unless you have regular inspections
The careful text-books measure
(Let all who build beware!)
The load, the shock, the pressure
Material can bear.
So, when the buckled girder
Lets down the grinding span,
The blame of loss, or murder,
Is laid upon the man.
Not on the Stuff — the Man!
- Rudyard Kipling
Thank you.
The average truck driver doesn’t think rules apply to him.