Could protective barriers have prevented Baltimore bridge collapse?

The collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore on Tuesday has raised serious questions about what safety or protective mechanisms might have prevented the disaster and the loss of six lives. It is still unclear what caused a massive 985-foot long cargo vessel to apparently lose control and strike a pier, also known as a pylon, a critical part of the structure that keeps the deck of the bridge in place.

From 1960 to 2015, there were 35 major bridge collapses worldwide due to ship or barge collisions, with a total of 342 people killed, according to a 2018 report from the World Association for Waterborne Transport Infrastructure. Eighteen of those collapses happened in the U.S., including in 1980 when a 609-foot freighter slammed into the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in the Tampa Bay area of Florida.

The Francis Scott Key Bridge, which was built in 1977, does not appear to have any protective barriers in place, and the pier that was struck was not surrounded by any barrier or buffer-like structures, according to photos and videos from the scene. There are some small circular-shaped structures in the water, but it is unclear if they are barriers that serve another purpose.

Harichandran said other more cost-effective systems can be used to alert bridge users. 'You could have trip wires and have more sophisticated warning sensors that would warn of approaching the bridge much earlier,' Harichandran said. 'For those kinds of remote sensing approaches, you could potentially have given an earlier warning of a disaster that could have gotten people out of the way.

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