On July 19, 22-year-old Morgan Lake found herself in the terrifying position of having to blindly swim her way out of a fast-sinking Chrysler Sebring after a collision launched her car off the Bay Bridge. As if the bridge weren’t already so scary that some drivers are paying $25 to be shuttled across.
But state transportation officials are saying that, Lake’s experience notwithstanding, the Bay Bridge is actually pretty safe. In fact, it has “fewer accidents than most state highways.” (Does being scared to death make us safer drivers?) Also, despite that they didn’t help Lake (a fact the National Transportation Safety Board is investigating), the 36- to 46-inch-high rails are made to push cars back onto the road.
Here’s a factoid that’s intended to make us feel more comfortable but, for me, does the opposite: the last time a car fell off the Bay Bridge was 2008.
