A trucker’s death on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. Could better guardrails have prevented it?
VIRGINIA BEACH — Christopher Scott was driving a tractor-trailer on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel June 22 when his front driver’s side tire suddenly went up onto the bridge’s left-side curb.
The impact blew out the tire, causing Scott to lose control of his truck, according to a police report into the accident.
The tractor-trailer tore out more than 100 feet of the northbound bridge’s left-side guardrail before falling about 25 feet into the water.
Though the State Medical Examiner’s report hasn’t come back, police said the initial information is that Scott — found dead inside his cab — died from a combination of blunt force trauma and drowning.
Though Scott, 36, wasn’t speeding — and hit the guardrails only at an angle — there was nothing the aluminum barriers could do to keep his rig on the bridge.
___
Little margin for error
What’s also clear is that there’s very little margin for error for 18-wheelers using the bridge-tunnel, which crosses between Virginia Beach and the Eastern Shore. With not much space on either side of the two-lane roadways, they can’t veer too far to either side, lest they end up in the water.
When it opened in 1964, the bridge-tunnel — nearly 18 miles long — was one of the “Seven Engineering Wonders of the Modern World.”
But that recognition wasn’t for the guardrails. They consist of a series of three aluminum pipe rails alongside the roadway. The hollow tubes are supported by aluminum posts every eight feet that are bolted to a concrete curb.
The bridge-tunnel’s railings, designed in the 1950s, are made to withstand glancing blows from cars or pickups going 62 mph or less.
That system isn’t nearly as strong as the concrete jersey barriers at the Hampton Roads and the Monitor-Merrimac bridge-tunnels. The guard railings at the HRBT and Monitor-Merrimac are designed to keep even tractor-trailers on the bridge, though that’s not guaranteed at all speeds and angles.
Mike Crist, the deputy executive director overseeing infrastructure for the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel Authority, said the guardrails at the CBBT are TL (Test Level)-3 barriers, which are “designed to keep cars and pickups from departing the road.”
Though the bridge was designed in the 1950s, Crist said the barriers would meet federal specifications even today based on current traffic and usage.
“It does the job that it’s designed for,” he said. “We routinely get accidents with cars and pickup trucks that don’t go through the rail. That never makes the news because it damages the car, and nobody gets hurt. We go out we fix those patches and repair it and restore it.”
At the same time, Crist said, “that aluminum rail is not designed to take the impact of a tractor-trailer at any angle.”
He says truckers using the bridge are aware of the risks, knowing they must “stay between the lines” as they cross.
“I think they also know that if they hit that rail, it’s not gonna stop them,” Crist said. “I’m not going to say all truckers know that. But I’ve talked to a few, and they realize that the rail will stop cars and pickup trucks, but it won’t stop a loaded tractor-trailer going 60 miles an hour.”
___
What caused truck to veer?
Scott, of Henrico County, was on his way to Connecticut to deliver shrubbery from a Suffolk warehouse.
He was driving a 2018 Kenworth tractor, and was hauling for Keep it Moving 22 LLC, a company out of Mechanicsville, Maryland. He planned to avoid D.C. by way of U.S. 13 and the Eastern Shore.
When Scott went through a tollbooth minutes before the crash, at about 1:50 p.m., he had a friendly conversation with the operator about the toll amount. “Everything seemed fine, and he went on,” said Police Chief Edward A. Spencer of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel Authority.
But there’s still no guess as to why Scott veered to his left after only about a mile.
“We have no idea,” Spencer said. “He seemed wide awake coming through the toll lanes. I don’t think he fell asleep. I just don’t know what happened. But he got too close to the curb and that chain reacted everything.”
No other vehicles were involved. But a car driving in the opposite direction was struck with flying debris. That damaged the 2022 Chrysler Pacifica and injured its passenger, a 34-year-old Florida woman. She was taken to a hospital with minor injuries.
Spencer said Scott was not speeding on the bridge, which has a posted limit of 55 mph. And while the medical examiner’s report hasn’t come back yet, there’s no evidence he was drinking or otherwise under the influence.
He was not wearing his seatbelt, the police report said.
“The dash seemed to be pushed in towards the driver’s seat, causing very little room between driver and steering wheel,” it read.
Not wearing the seat belt “had nothing to do with him controlling the vehicle,” Spencer said, though he said he doesn’t know whether wearing it could have helped to save Scott.
Asked whether the trucker might have been using his cellphone when he veered to his left, Spencer said his phones were damaged by the water, and that investigators couldn’t determine if he was using them.
The truck’s logbook — in which Scott was to track his sleep hours — was water-logged and illegible.
“There were damaged paper logs recovered from the truck, but they were unreadable,” the police report said.
There was some fog at the time of the crash, but the roadway was dry and there were no wind conditions, the report said. Scott had a valid commercial driver’s license issued in 2022, and his medical card was current with the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles.
___
Stronger guardrails?
Two other major bridges in the region — the HRBT and Monitor-Merrimac — both have TL-5 barriers, two levels stronger than the CBBT. Those bridges’ guardrails are strong enough to stop tractor trailers at many — though not all — angles of impact.
“If he had hit a concrete Jersey wall, maybe he would have been redirected back into the road,” Crist said. “But we don’t know, and we’ll never know.”
Trading out the CBBT’s aluminum guardrails for reinforced concrete is a no-go because of how much weight that would add, Crist said. The concrete barriers weigh 650 pounds per linear foot, he said — too heavy for the bridge to support.
“Obviously aluminum pipe rail is much lighter than that,” Crist said.
A feasibility study years ago found such a switch unworkable: Adding so much weight — and still wanting to carry traffic — would require new girders and support systems, Crist said. In fact, while the bridge’s basic foundation — the piling into the bay’s bedrock — could remain, the bridge span itself would need to be changed out.
The cost would be in the billions.
Though the HRBT and Monitor-Merrimac have concrete guardrails, “they designed it to carry that from the beginning,” Crist said. “They didn’t have a concern about overload because it was built into the structure.”
___
17 ‘over-the-side’ accidents
It’s clear that the CBBT’s modest guardrail system has led to its share of “over-the-side accidents” through the years, most involving 18-wheeler trucks.
There have been 17 over-the-side accidents since 1984, according to a report from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel Authority Police Department. Those accidents have caused 20 deaths, with two drivers rescued from the water.
Five people were killed in 1997 when a Hyundai sedan tried to pass two vehicles, causing a three-car collision in which the Hyundai went airborne and flew over the guardrail. The bodies of the driver and four passengers were found in the bay the next morning.
In 2005, a Chevrolet SUV suddenly veered to the left, flipped over the guardrail and plunged into the bay. A similar event happed with a Toyota Avalon in 2011. In another case, a six-wheel box truck crashed through a guardrail in 2020, with the driver’s body found on the Outer Banks four months later.
But 13 of the 17 cases involve 18-wheelers going off the bridge.
Those typically involve drivers falling asleep, being inattentive, or in one case, jackknifing through a guardrail after approaching a work area too quickly. In 2018, a tractor-trailer driven by an intoxicated driver struck a van from behind. The van “bounced off” the guardrail but the truck went through it.
Some truckers have gone over the side from accidents not their own making.
In 1988, a sedan’s improper passing caused a tractor-trailer’s driver to swerve to avoid the collision. The trucker was killed when he went through the guardrail and into the bay. In 1985, a tractor-trailer is believed to have been struck by lightning before going over the side.
___
New life, new hope
Scott’s girlfriend, Melissa Vo, went into labor the afternoon of the accident, and immediately called him. But the calls went straight to voice mail. She delivered the couple’s son about 24 hours after Scott’s truck plunged into the water. She named the boy Cameron, as the couple had previously discussed.
“It’s just a tragedy,” said Spencer. “We feel for him and his family.”
Peter Dujardin, 757-897-2062, pdujardin@dailypress.com
