Forums Forums Street News Lorry Hits Bridge--Woodchurch Road Asda

Bit late on this as I saw it yesterday. A large high sided lorry scraped the underside of the railway bridge. Police inspecting the damage. Cant understand ---are we making lorries too high to get under what is a major route bridge or did driver put too much air in tyres!!

There is no legal height to lorries allowed on UK roads, there has been a trend to make taller lorries especially for lightweight goods.

They cannot make that bridge any higher (because the railway would require ramping for a considerable distance) and to make the road lower would require the bridge substructure to be rebuilt as well as numerous other engineering problems which would involve closing the railway and the road for considerable time.

The bridge is 4.7m which is lower than the suggested maximum height of a normal lorry (4.9m) and I think it is still only marked in imperial measurements (15'3") which may not be good for the numerous foreign drivers we have around. I also don't think it has signage warning of a low bridge.

There are numerous devices available that could warn drivers that their lorry is too tall.

Most European countries have a 4.9m limit.

if a bridge is less than 16ft6 it has to be marked with its height

Thanks to sonylegs pointing out it now has a dual imperial/metric sign which says 15'3" and 4.6m.

The metric measurement is slightly conservative as the actual measurement is above 4.692m.

that bridge has always caused problems due to its height above the road surface which is unable to be lowered. Many will notice that the road still floods right below the bridge even after lots of work been done on the drain system.