Paradigm Shift: Bridges Schmidges

Posted by Greg Allen on 08.07.2007

In an act that will surely make him the most unpopular man on the internet, Greg explains why you shouldn't worry about your local bridge collapsing under you. Plus, how to easily prevent mine disasters and why the new terrorism law would make fast friends with Darth Vader.

First, a discussion of the bridge collapse

Nobody wants to say that the death and injury of the victims wasn't horrible. I'm certainly not going to argue that, but so far the death toll is at a grand total of six people, with eight missing and over a hundred injured. Every day I turn on the radio and still hear about how the American Society of Engineers has declared over 159,000 bridges in the United States "deficient" or "obsolete" roughly one out of every four. Are you terrified yet?

Kent Harries of the University of Pittsburgh's School of Engineering had this to say, "I think we're going to see bridges collapse, and we do on a regular basis."

He's an idiot. The collapse of a bridge in Minneapolis has not magically increased the probability of every other bridge in America collapsing. It's still as incredibly rare as ever. Honestly, can anyone remember the last time there was a major bridge collapse in the United States? I doubt it, so for those of you who don't know it was in 2002 when a barge (i.e. a huge boat) crashed into a bridge on Arkansas river. A total of fourteen people were killed in the incident. The only significant disaster before that was in 1987 and killed ten. Since then of course there have been other bridge failures, but these are minor bridges in smaller towns, usually with no casualties whatsoever and usually caused by floods that destroyed a lot more than just a bridge.

Yes it is horrible that these people who just wanted to cross a body of water died for no good reason, but can we please get our priorities in order? That same society of engineers has determined that it would cost $9.4 billion every year for twenty years in order to perfect every bridge in the United States—a total of $188 billion. I'm sorry for those who lost their lives and their families, BUT 30 DEATHS IN 20 YEARS DOES NOT JUSTIFY SPENDING 188 BILLION DOLLARS.

God almighty does anyone understand what else that money could go towards? Here's a list of the top (causes of death) in the United States. Notice the lack of "bridge collapse" anywhere even close to close to remotely close to making that list. Face it people, you're more likely to die from falling off a ladder in the coming year than you are from a bridge collapse.
You know, we could focus instead on healthcare for the forty million Americans who are uninsured. 18,000 of them die every year, and most of their deaths are easily prevented.

Methinks $188 billion could help them out a bit. When bridges in America collapse, over half of the time it's because of floods and has nothing to do with poor construction of deterioration. In fact, only 9% of bridge collapses were due to poor construction or lack of upkeep. (Source)
That's a higher number than we'd all like it to be, but the important fact is that this is not so serious an issue as to justify some colossal effort to overhaul American bridges. The media and public are focusing on this because bridge collapse is sensational, but cooler heads need to prevail on this issue, and the money needs to follow the most numerous causes of death, not those that make for the best television.

Next a look at the Utah Mine Collapse

With mines like these, we have a much easier to prevent issue. As some of us learned during the Sago Mine Collapse last year, American Mine safety laws are actually some of the best in the world. The regulations are detailed, specific, and relatively easy to verify compliance for. There is only one real issue that keeps allowing horror stories like these to keep happening, and that is that the fines for mining companies found to not be in compliance with these regulations are unbearably low. Many mine companies find it more profitable to just pay the fines, year after year, instead of forking over the dough to repair the despicable state of their mines. If you're tired of hearing about disasters like the recent one in Utah and the earlier one in Sago, don't support new regulations. Support higher fines so that it's in a company's financial interest to keep their workers safe. Believe me, they'll follow the money. In fact, higher fines for construction companies who build bridges later found to be unsafe would probably solve the preventable aspects of that issue too.

The new terrorism bill is awful and founded on fantasy

Today I had the distinct pleasure of watching The Bourne Ultimatum . It's a really great flick, and if you get the chance, you should see it. However, I wonder how many of the people watching understand how unrealistic the capabilities of the government are in that movie. Every time Bourne touches anything electronic, the feds manage to tap his phone, intercept his email, get ten different cameras on him… and this is outside US soil even. In fact, a reporter is put under watch just for speaking a codeword into a random phone. Apparently every voice on every phone in Britain is scanned by supercomputers for this word.

This my dear friends is a fantasy. The processing power for that sort of analytical capacity is all kinds of impossible. Data mining and domestic surveillance are nowhere near that competent, and the end result is usually just horrible things happening to innocent people and privacy violations galore. Recall that documents obtained back in 2005 on the Bush wiretapping scandal found he was wiretapping anti-war groups like the religious Quakers (who are pacifists and therefore inherently not terrorists) and a California group of singing old ladies. Giving the executive branch unrestrained authority to tap in American's personal lives is nothing more than a recipe for dictatorship. If that doesn't convince you, consider that both the FBI and the CIA report that they are critically understaffed. Do you really want the already overworked agents wasting their time listening in on Bush's political opponents? Don't know about you, but I'd rather they focus their efforts on things that might actually help in the war on terrorism.

Long story short, the new bill, allows the government to circumvent the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and spy on American citizens without a warrant so long as there is suspicion that the communication occurs outside the United States. In today's digital age, that statement is so vague as to be useless.


For a really great article on the new bill click (here)