According to current reports, the Maryland Transportation Authority Police responded to the ship’s “mayday” and stopped traffic in the minutes before the catastrophe, but 6 construction workers are still unaccounted for.
They keep reporting this, and maybe it was because the video was sped up, but it looked like there was still traffic going across until very close to the collision
The last car crossing that I can see clears the span about 1:28:06; the bridge collapses about 1:28:48. That's about 40 seconds of gap between the traffic and the collapse.
I haven't timed how frequently cars are coming, but it seems to be about every 30 seconds or so, which--combined with the time it takes to cross the bridge--is evidence that a bridge closure was effected just before the bridge collapse.
If the police were able to close the bridge just in time, that's a pretty spectacular response. There were only ~5 minutes between the ship loosing power initially and the impact. The police saved lives, and it's only a shame that the construction crew wasn't evacuated in time.
* There was a request to close the bridge when the ship lost power, which went over police dispatch about a minute before the bridge collapse (the bridge collapse is reported at timestamp 1:09 in the audio).
* Someone was able to hold the outer loop traffic at ~0:20 in the audio, as they reported they were already driving along at the time.
* Inner loop traffic is reported stopped at ~0:56 in the audio. I suspect there may already have been a police car there because of the construction on the bridge.
* Between 0:20 and 0:56, the conversation is about pulling the workcrew off the bridge. The police officer blocking inner loop traffic, after reporting stopping traffic, is indicating that he's waiting for a second unit to arrive before going onto the bridge to collect them.
* At 1:09, the bridge is reported collapsed, and multiple officers confirm. There is a question as to which traffic is stopped--the people blocking inner loop traffic are unable to confirm outer loop stoppage, but the person holding outer loop informs them of the stoppage at the end of the recording.
So traffic seems to have been stopped for about 10-50 seconds before the bridge collapse, depending on the exact length of time between someone stopping traffic and radioing in that they did so. From what I can tell, it sounds like outer loop traffic was stopped in time solely by sheer coincidence, while the inner loop traffic may have been existing police presence (for the construction zone) changing posture to a full closure.
Do you know what inner loop and outer loop traffic means here? Are they different sides/directions of the bridge?
And it is tragic how close the police were to evacuating the work crews. I interpret that the officer blocking one entry intended to go on to the bridge but was waiting for another cruiser to block the bridge before he left. A few more minutes and the bridge might have collapsed with no casualties. Though at least an officer attempting a rescue wasn't hurt.
The bridge is part of I-695, which is a beltway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_695_(Maryland). Inner loop refers to the inner lanes (traveling clockwise), outer loop the outer lanes (traveling counterclockwise).
Further clarification: because it is a loop, you can't use cardinal directions ("East bound I695" for instance) to indicate which lane you are talking about.
The optimist's gambler's fallacy says luck is a constant attribute of an individual, and if someone gets lucky they are more likely to have a high luck stat and thus be more lucky in the future. The pessimist's gambler's fallacy says luck is a consumable resource, and if someone gets lucky they consume their luck and are thus less likely to be lucky in the future.
There's a pretty good spanish film named Intacto that has something like this as it's premise: people who survive disasters have "luck" that can be captured/transferred by other people by playing games like russian roulette.
Honestly, that would probably fuck me up for a little while, knowing I was less than a minute away from probably being dead. I hope they're okay, mentally.
There is a semi-truck that enters from the right just before the crash at https://youtu.be/N39w6aQFKSQ?t=299 (4m59s). And some more vehicles that follow after. Doesn't seem like they stopped "all" traffic as is claimed.
I'm hearing there were at least 20 cars and a truck on the bridge, plus construction workers, at the time; my heart goes out to those families