Katherine Dean is lucky to have walked away after pieces of a crumbling bridge fell on her car.
A Maryland woman fell victim to one of America's
60,000 structurally deficient bridges this
week:
The driver, Katherine Dean, said she was driving on Suitland Road in Morningside, Maryland, when pieces of the overpass fell onto her car. The concrete smashed in Dean's windshield and hood, but she wasn't seriously hurt.
"I thought somebody threw something over the bridge. I never would have thought the bridge itself would give way," Dean said. "There was glass all over me, everywhere."
And while a spokesman for the Maryland State Highway Administration said the bridge was safe, Dean disagrees:
"I think it's horrible for them to say because they didn't take my life into consideration at all," Dean said. "That's saying that what happened to me is normal, acceptable. It's not normal. It's not acceptable."
The bridge is located at the Inner Loop of Interstate I95 and Interstate 495. It is only one of a massive and growling list of
structurally deficient bridges in the country:
America's bridges are a sad story. Many were built in the middle of the 20th century, when the United States invested in its infrastructure, and are reaching or have passed the lifespans that were planned when they were built. And since the United States no longer invests in its infrastructure, thanks to Republicans and their unwillingness to tax the rich, our bridges are aging and decaying. They're becoming symbols of our national decline, but symbols millions of us cross every day. There are more than 60,000 structurally deficient bridges in the U.S., and tens of thousands more that are functionally obsolete.
President Obama's 2016 budget includes
$478 billion for infrastructure spending to repair America's roads and bridges. But, given how many jobs that would create and how much that would benefit the American people,
good luck getting that through this Congress:
Details of Obama's budget plan released in recent days have been widely rejected by congressional Republicans. But finding a way to enact a new federal infrastructure spending plan has been an unattainable goal on Capitol Hill for several years. Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) hoped to pass a new highway bill shortly after the GOP took control of the House in 2011 but has struggled to build support among skeptical conservatives.
12:05 PM PT: As this story has started to gain a lot of attention, Acting Maryland Transportation Secretary Pete Rahn has ordered that 27 Maryland bridges undergo immediate inspection:
"Motorists should not have to think twice about driving across or under one of our bridges," said Acting Transportation Secretary Rahn. "These targeted statewide inspections will help us immediately identify any bridges in need of repair, with the goal of preventing what happened on Tuesday from occurring again. I want to extend my sincere apologies to the driver involved in Tuesday's incident. I am grateful she was not injured."