Freeway access ramps

Earlier today, a tractor-trailer went off an interstate bridge or bridge ramp and fell 70 to 100 feet into the Kanawha River.

That brought to mind two similar accidents of recent months. In November 2006, a school bus went off a ramp in Huntsville, Ala., falling about 70 feet nosefirst and killing four high school students.

This March, a charter bus carrying members of the Bluffton University baseball team went off a ramp or bridge in Atlanta, killing six people. Bluffton University is near Toledo.

And that brings to mind this passage from the Ohio Department of Transportation inspection report of the Ironton-Russell Bridge, dated Nov. 6-9, 2006:

The guardrail is insufficient. The guardrail is low on the Kentucky Approach at the left turn in
the northbound lane onto the bridge. In its current condition, this guardrail may not be able to
restrain a vehicle at this location.

You can't base public policy on three accidents and one waiting to happen. It would take an engineer to answer this question: Were these bridge approaches designed with modern vehicles in mind? I'm no expert in large transportation vehicles, so I have no idea how trucks and buses at modern speeds, wheel design and whatever else would act if they encountered one of these guardrails.

I do hope, though, that someone asks the questions and gets a good answer.