Ever since the driver of a truck laden with Asian pears flew off the Bay Bridge’s new S-curve and plummeted to his death last November, the California Highway Patrol has been policing the speed limit and Caltrans has added striping, signs, rumble strips and other features. Those efforts have helped reduce the curve’s initially high accident rate.
And yesterday, I noticed that Caltrans has installed a fence (visible in this clip that I posted, at risk of the usual snipes about my radio-listening and car- driving choices, though I work at the bike-hugging Guardian) along that fatal section.
I’m not sure the fence is intended to stop vehicles that have gone airborne. But it sure helps alert folks to the fact that there is nothing between them and the deep blue sea, if they have the misfortune to plunge over this concrete edge. (And that’s before we even get to the possibility that Yerba Island, where the pear truck landed, is haunted by the spirits of native people whose graves were disturbed.) But I can’t help wondering why it took until March to install this fence.