Pitfalls of My Career...

[zootsaxismyaxe]

One of the downsides of bring a civil engineer is that I've discovered that when nature- and/or infrastructure-related tragedy strikes, I find myself looking forward to the professional journal articles and future specials on NOVA and similar shows/series.  This wasn't my first reaction on 9/11 (although I did read some facinating items on the

Comments

[mkwhite]

Yeah, it was the same for me on the Minneapolis bridge. My first thought was "Wow, I wonder what that looked like/how it happened/etc." Then they started talking about fatalities, and I started feeling like a really bad person for thinking about the mechanics first.

[tskirvin]

I've tried to avoid thinking about the casualties entirely, and have really been wondering about what effects this will have, from the political and engineering perspectives. This isn't really *that* far off from how I was acting on 9/11. The badness has happened, and I can't do anything to help, but I can speculate as to what the effects will be and try to make those better if anything comes up...

Expected Impacts

[zootsaxismyaxe]

I honestly don't expect there to be any substantial effects on how society operates after this tragedy. Engineers have long said that the nation's infrastructure is badly in need of rehabilitation (http://www.asce.org/reportcard/2005/index2005.cfm). Unfortunately, preventative maintenance is never an easy sell to taxpayers & lawmakers once stories like this leave front page news (they aren't "sexy" projects that generate good PR & reelections). Additionally, the government has historically been very lax at taxing and enforcing measures toward the largest culprit in the wear & tear on the nation's roadways and bridges--namely the trucking industry.

By September 1st, this whole disaster will be largely forgotten and nothing (at least outside the State of Minnesota) will have fundamentally changed. At least that's what I'd bet on. Sad, isn't it? Hopefully I'm wrong, though...

Re: Expected Impacts

[mkwhite]

I agree. Not that that should come as any surprise.

But people don't like to connect the dots. We all know that shipping by truck is relatively affordable, and depends upon the cost of petroleum for fuel, but the cost of the damage to bridge and roads (more petroleum for asphalt) is somehow ignored. If we taxed the trucking companies to cover the maintenance of the roads they do so much damage to, the cost of everything that has to be shipped goes up. And more expensive = bad. So we have to pay for the repairs to the roads and bridges ourselves with taxes. But more taxes = bad. So we leave things to fatigue and corrode and fall apart and maybe some people fall into the Mississippi and die. And death is bad and people are outraged that nothing was done to prevent it, but stuff is cheap and taxes are not too bad, so we'll just forget about it all in a few days.

PS: Did you get that letter from ASCE today?

Extra PS: I hate trucks. Especially "design trucks."