Illegal transportation? Design defect? ​​Insight into the Hubei highway bridge rollover accident

A highway bridge in Hubei has overturned, killing four and injuring eight. People are paying close attention to the cause of the bridge overturn. How did a 198-ton truck get on the highway? How did the illegal transportation problem occur? The bridge where the accident occurred is a single-column pier bridge. Are there any flaws in its design? Are there any flaws in the construction, maintenance, and upkeep of the bridge?

Bridge rollover incident has caused 4 deaths and 8 injuries

At 15:36 on the 18th, a bridge overturned at the D ramp of Huahu Interchange on the G50 Shanghai-Chongqing Expressway (the ramp from the Shanghai-Chongqing Expressway to the Daguannan Expressway). The transportation, public security, emergency and other departments of Hubei Province and City rushed to the scene to deal with the situation. The Highway Bureau of the Ministry of Transport led bridge experts to the scene.

According to the Ezhou Fire Department, the rescue measures adopted at the scene included "sealing off and guarding, group investigation, cooling and eliminating dangers, fixing the vehicle body, demolition and rescue, and on-site lighting". At 16:31 on the 18th, the on-site disposal was completed, and a total of 7 trapped people were rescued, of which 3 died and 4 were injured. Some of the injured escaped on their own before the rescue team arrived.

The reporter saw at the scene on the 18th that the ramp bridge of the interchange approach bridge section overturned 90 degrees, and three accident vehicles fell side by side, and a car was crushed by the overturned ramp bridge. The G45 Daguan Expressway in the Guangzhou direction and the G50 Shanghai-Chongqing Expressway were interrupted in both directions.

The scene of the incident was hundreds of meters away from a nearby village. Many villagers told reporters that when the incident happened, they heard a loud noise and thought there was an earthquake. It was not until they saw someone forwarding related videos in a WeChat group that they realized that there was an accident on the nearby ramp bridge.

The reporter went to the scene again on the morning of the 19th. The scene had been cordoned off. In addition to the civilian police who patrolled continuously, nearly 50 villagers volunteered to guide passing vehicles at nearby intersections.

A special large-scale transport truck "passed the inspection and entered the highway" became the focus

A relevant person in charge of the Highway Police Corps of the Public Security Department of Hubei Province revealed that there was a small-scale construction on the ramp bridge deck at the time of the accident; the three trucks involved were traveling in the same direction on the same side lane. One of the trucks, which was heading to Guangdong and had a license plate of Shaanxi AN0257, was a special vehicle with 11 axles and 22 wheels. The cargo it was transporting was heat exchanger tanks with a load capacity of 198 tons.

According to people from the highway regulatory department, overweight special transport vehicles such as Shaanxi AN0257 must report to the relevant departments before going on the road, and travel on the approved route, and even need traffic guidance when necessary. The designed weight limit of the section where the accident occurred is only 55 tons, and the three trucks traveling in the same direction were all in the lane on the overturned side, exceeding the anti-overturning standard.

Can a truck with a load of 198 tons go on the expressway? Is it suspected of illegal overloading? The above-mentioned regulatory department personnel said that as long as the vehicle has obtained the overload transportation permit as required, it can enter the expressway. The reporter found out from the official website of Shaanxi Provincial Highway Bureau that the vehicle Shaanxi AN0257 obtained the overload permit from the Shaanxi Provincial Highway Bureau on December 10, and its monitoring method was self-monitoring. The route was "Lintong Toll Station-G30 Lianhuo Expressway-Qindong Toll Station"; the total weight of the vehicle and cargo was 198 tons; it was a vehicle of Tianjin Pingfa Heavy Transport Co., Ltd.

The relevant departments of Hubei Province retrieved the driving track of the vehicle involved in the accident and found that the Shaanxi AN0257 truck did not exit the Lianhuo Expressway at Qindong according to the declared route, but continued to drive towards Henan. Since there are no toll stations between provincial borders, it drove to Hubei via the Daguan Expressway. The relevant departments of Hubei checked the approval procedures and found that the declared load of the vehicle in Hubei was 99 tons, which does not require traffic guidance.

How to make bridges safer is worth studying

The bridge rollover highlights the seriousness of road safety issues in an extreme form.

The reporter learned at the scene that the overturned bridge and piers were relatively intact, with almost no signs of breakage. The specific cause of the overturn will depend on the results of the investigation.

The reporter learned from Hubei Provincial Communications Investment Group that the ramp bridge where the accident occurred was invested and constructed by Hubei Edong Yangtze River Highway Bridge Co., Ltd. and was completed and opened to traffic on September 28, 2010. The ramp bridge was designed by Hubei Provincial Transportation Planning and Design Institute Co., Ltd., with a highway load of 55 tons at level 1, and its anti-eccentric load overturning standards met the national requirements at the time.

In terms of maintenance, Hubei Chutian Lianfa Road and Bridge Maintenance Co., Ltd. undertook the single-column pier reinforcement project of the bridge where the accident occurred and carried out reinforcement work in October 2020. The company was included in the "blacklist" of Hubei highway and waterway engineering construction by the Hubei Provincial Department of Transportation in 2019 due to collusion in bidding activities.

Since the bridge where the accident occurred is a single-column pier structure, the bridge design issue has once again attracted attention.

“Although the use of single-column piers is not recommended now and single-column pier structure road bridges have been included in the key supervision scope by the transportation department, the bridge design complied with national standards more than 10 years ago and was also reinforced,” said a person familiar with the design unit.

The reporter found that many experts have previously publicly questioned the safety of single-column pier bridges, pointing out that single-column pier bridges have the hidden danger of poor lateral stability and are prone to overall overturning accidents under the influence of factors such as vehicle load, support settlement, its own structural form and temperature.

Some experts have suggested that a nationwide investigation and rectification of safety hazards of single-column pier bridges be carried out, and that a variety of measures be adopted to remove hazards and reinforce each bridge to eliminate hidden dangers.

The relevant departments are still conducting further investigation into the responsibility for this accident.

Source: Xinhua News Agency