"National Highways It is something that should not happen an oversized vehicle entering and damaging a tunnel at one of Britain's busiest river crossings. "Baffling" and "unfathomable" were just two words used to describe experts' confusion over how multiple safety systems failed to prevent the incident at the Dartford Crossing on 23 January. The driver caused extensive damage along the entire length of the tunnel to multiple pieces of safety equipment, causing it to close for 30 hours."
"There are two tunnels at the Dartford Crossing, which both take northbound traffic from Dartford in Kent to Thurrock in Essex. (Southbound traffic uses the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge.) The road itself is the A282, linking the two ends of the M25 at junctions 1A and 31. One of the nation's busiest stretches of road, it handles an average of 150,000 vehicles a day, increasing to 180,000 on busy days."
An oversized vehicle entered the left-hand Dartford Crossing tunnel at about midday on 23 January and struck overhead equipment along its 0.8 mile length. Multiple critical systems were damaged, including overhead fans, the fire suppression system and CCTV, forcing the tunnel to close for more than 30 hours. Northbound traffic was diverted into the adjacent tunnel, producing two-hour delays while engineers worked overlapping shifts to repair extensive damage. The A282 link handles up to 180,000 vehicles on busy days and has two tunnels with maximum heights of 5m and 4.8m, respectively. Experts described the failure of multiple safety systems as baffling and unfathomable.
Read at www.bbc.com
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