Top 10 Most Dangerous U.S. Bridges That Not Every Driver Survived

Every time you drive across a bridge you make an assumption you don't even know you're making. You assume the road continues on the other side. You assume the structure beneath you is what it appears to be. You assume you will arrive. Most of the time that assumption is correct. But not always. These are the ten U.S. bridges where some drivers set out to cross and never reached the other side — and the stories of what happened when the assumption was wrong: Chesapeake Bay Bridge, Maryland — No emergency shoulder. Narrow lanes. One hundred and eighty-six feet above open water. A bridge that has broken enough drivers that an entire private industry exists to take the wheel for them. Webbers Falls Bridge, Oklahoma — Memorial Day weekend, two thousand and two. A barge with an unconscious operator drifting at full speed. Fourteen people went into the Arkansas River before anyone could stop traffic. Queen Isabella Causeway, Texas — Four days after September eleventh, two thousand and one, while the country was still in shock. A barge strike at two in the morning left a gap in the road that drivers couldn't see in the dark. Eight people drove off the edge. Three survived because four fishermen went into the water to pull them out. Sunshine Skyway Bridge, Florida — May ninth, nineteen eighty. A freighter in a sudden storm. A twelve-hundred-foot section of bridge in Tampa Bay. A Greyhound bus. Thirty-five people. I-35W Bridge, Minneapolis — Structurally deficient for seventeen years. A report identifying the failure point filed fourteen months before the collapse. Thirteen people in the Mississippi River during evening rush hour on August first, two thousand and seven. Silver Bridge, West Virginia — December fifteenth, nineteen sixty-seven. Rush hour. Holiday traffic. The entire bridge gone in under sixty seconds. Forty-six people in the Ohio River. And the moment that forced the United States government to finally create a national bridge inspection program. Fern Hollow Bridge, Pittsburgh — Rated in poor condition for eleven years. Collapsed on the morning President Biden was in Pittsburgh to give a speech about fixing bridges like it. Nobody was killed. The outcome came down entirely to luck. Mianus River Bridge, Connecticut — One thirty in the morning on June twenty-eighth, nineteen eighty-three. A corroded pin nobody caught in inspections. Three vehicles into the Mianus River in the dark. Three people who never made it home. Hatchie River Bridge, Tennessee — The river had been quietly eating the foundation from below the waterline for years. Nobody detected it. Eight people drove off the edge on an ordinary April afternoon in nineteen eighty-nine. The collapse changed how underwater bridge inspections are conducted across the entire country. Sunshine Skyway — The People Who Almost Didn't Make It — The other side of the nineteen eighty collapse. The drivers who stopped in time. The ordinary people who stood in the rain on the broken edge of a highway and waved their arms at oncoming traffic to keep others from going over. The margin between thirty-five and something much worse was people. Standing at the edge. In a storm. Some of these bridges failed because of age. Some because of design flaws nobody caught. Some because a barge struck a support at the wrong moment on the wrong day. And some because somebody knew something was wrong and the money to fix it never arrived in time. Every single person on every single one of these bridges was doing the most ordinary thing in the world. Driving. Going somewhere. Trusting the bridge. Most of the time that trust is justified. But not always.