Trinidad: Errant truck driver causes interchange mishap

(Trinidad Guardian) As works con­tin­ue on the Curepe In­ter­change, one dri­ver is said to have ig­nored the height re­stric­tions while ap­proach­ing the work­site lead­ing to an ac­ci­dent, with a mo­torist nar­row­ly es­cap­ing with his life.

A video record­ed by an­oth­er mo­torist showed that the dri­ver of a truck came in­to con­tact with the over­head tem­po­rary gantry. Re­ports in­di­cate that the dri­ver ig­nored the tem­po­rary height re­stric­tion even af­ter be­ing told that he could not con­tin­ue be­yond a par­tic­u­lar point at Val­sayn, just be­fore the in­ter­change.

 
An­oth­er ap­proach­ing ve­hi­cle was hit by the falling over­head gantry.

In a re­lease is­sued to the me­dia, The Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NID­CO) stat­ed that the sec­ond ve­hi­cle was en­gaged in an il­le­gal dri­ve on the shoul­der of the high­way up­on the col­lapse of the gantry.

NID­CO said that traf­fic re­stric­tions were out­lined in a pub­lic no­tice re­leased by NID­CO on Fri­day, Jan­u­ary 3, 2020.

The trans­port board in the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port will com­mence an in­ves­ti­ga­tion to de­ter­mine if the height re­stric­tions and con­di­tions on the per­mit for use of the trail­er were breached.

 
NID­CO said that the clear­ance on this bridge is to in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards and will fa­cil­i­tate all such ve­hi­cles.

And the com­pa­ny al­so ad­vised all mo­torists to pro­ceed with cau­tion and abide with all rules dur­ing the con­struc­tion pe­ri­od for the Curepe In­ter­change.

Ac­cord­ing to NID­CO the in­ci­dent has not re­sult­ed in any dam­age to the bridge in­fra­struc­ture.