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Flying manhole cover hits, kills driver on I-93 at end of southbound O'Neill Tunnel

The remains of the car on I-93 in Boston

The remains of the car on the Expressway. Photo by Ben.

State Police report a manhole on the southbound side of the O'Neill Tunnel became dislodged and went airborne - flying right into the windshield of a car and killing the driver.

The heavy metal cover then flew out the back window of the car.

After impact, the vehicle continued southbound in the left lane of Route 93 reaching near the area of East Berkeley street before hitting the wall on the left shoulder and coming to a stop. What caused the manhole to become dislodged is part of the ongoing investigation.

State Police say the driver was a woman, but did not release any other information.

In 2006, a woman died in a Big Dig tunnel when a ceiling slab fell on her car.

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Comments

Oh ,oh , Governor Baker's DOT. Hack workers did not tightly secure this man hole cover, idiots.

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You are a piece of crap. Someone died here.

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Manhole covers are generally secured by gravity and their mass.

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It is also awful to throw around blame before info is known, or to use the initial report (which friends&family of the person will find) as an opportunity to snipe at a politician.

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n/t

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We do have to cross our fingers when we drive through those tunnels

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in an active travel lane of a high speed interstate highway in the first place?

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The problem isn't the manholes, it's that they are left unsecured and/or without multiple methods of being secured. When this happened on other parts of the highway they welded down the manholes. Why didn't they do so here?

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But what's the purpose of a manhole if you have to weld the cover down?

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It is still much easier to free that cover and access an existing portal into whatever you need to get into than it is to drill an entirely new hole every time.

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Just tack weld it, grind off the welds.....

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The speed limit in the tunnels is 45 mph or lower. That said, clearly this should not have happened and someone (and his/her family and friends) have paid the ultimate price as a result. When I worked in public infrastructure, I used to keep a reproduction of (what I believed was) an old WW-I ear "morale booster" near my desk. It showed a rendering of a bi-plane crashed in a river with the message "WARNING: Consider the possible consequences if you are careless in your work!" I carried that message along to everyone in the organization.

On a broader level, while I must, and do, acknowledge how terrible this is, it is just amazing to think of this in the abstract - so many things had to go exactly wrong at exactly the right time for this to happen to this person (just as they did for Milena del Valle). It just reminds me of how little control we actually have (no matter how much we think we have). It's one of those never go to sleep angry or forget to kiss your kids in the morning moments.

What a terrible occurrence and our condolences to the deceased's loved ones.

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I routinely drive through the O'Neill Tunnel at off-peak times. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone doing 55 mph, let alone 45.

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I horrible tragedy, but posted speed limits don't mean much.

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Regarding how much 'control' we have: there's a famous story in the manufacturing world that might be relevant. Standard practice in the business was to allow so many bad parts per 10 thousand in each shipment. A Japanese firm won a contract, and shipped the required parts in two bags. One had ten thousand parts within tolerance. The other had three bad parts, with a note: "We weren't sure why you wanted bad parts, but here they are."

If you assume that perfection is impossible, it certainly will be. This was not an 'act of God.' It happened because someone just didn't care enough to prevent it.

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This was not an 'act of God.' It happened because someone just didn't care enough to prevent it.

Or it could have been that the cover was carefully and properly secured and over time, as the result of normal wear and tear, it came loose.

It's more satisfying to be able to say, "You screwed up", but sometimes it's just not as simple as that.

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It might have been welded down, but it is extremely cold out (hello ductile to brittle transition!) and there has been a lot of use of corrosive substances on the roads (vehicles track them into the tunnel).

Stress-corrosion cracking may defeat safety features if the conditions are severe enough.

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Even if something is designed well within tolerances, it doesn't mean it can't be damaged, in some novel or unexpected way, to the point that it's out of spec.

"Freak" accidents almost always involve some strange confluence of events, any one of which, taken out of the picture, would have completely prevented it. And no one ever thought to design the thing in question to work properly when faced with all of those events at once.

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...for many people, and certainly for the Massholes among us.

That said, my larger point was that I-93 north of Concord, NH, where the geometry and sight lines of the roadway (mostly) support the posted 70 mph limit, is a "high speed interstate highway". No one can credibly say, in view of its geometry and sight lines, that the O'Neill Tunnel is a "high speed interstate highway".

But all of this discussion might very well be irrelevant anyway, as it is at least possible and perhaps probable that, given the time of day, the deceased was not travelling particularly quickly immediately prior to the impact.

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Lots of things can happen, and travel at highway speeds rather reduces the margins of safety and error.

That said, this is horrible. We drive the tunnel fairly frequently in the cold/snow months, and with my MIL in need of transport. Very sad to hear that somebody suffered fatal consequences of equipment failure or staff error.

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Bless her and her family/friends. Terrible.

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Condolences to the victim and her family. Tragic. Watching the TV news coverage of this, I had forgotten that these flying manhole deaths aren't unheard of. It would seem that a length of strong chain, tied to the cover and the wall inside, long enough to access the manhole but too short to allow the cover to fly up to windshield level, would be a cheap solution. In my traffic detail days, utility workers would just pop them off with a crowbar. In fact, during the scrap metal craze a few years back, many covers were stolen overnight. Sad.

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Stabiloc™

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Bringing back terrible memories--hitchhiking with a friend down Rt 2 and seeing a metal coupling come off of a flat bed truck, watching it bounce towards us, was def going to hit my friend in the front seat. The combination of how fast we were going and the coupling was going, it bounced up under the car and ripped open the gas tank. Seiously lucky bc it was headed for the windshield. My heart goes out to this woman and her family.

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So far there have been way too many related fatalities with this 22 year old tunnel and Zakim bridge , tires falling off trucks smashing into on coming cars, manhole covers, ceiling collapse, ice chunks falling off bridge, cars ,trucks speeding, there use to be days when state workers treated their job as if there life depended on it, remember when toll takers use to walk the entire length of both Callahan and sumner tunnels to keep an eye on things, today there is not even a state police car in sight in the new tunnels. These state workers don't give a shit, theise scumbags are making $150k a year and still these morons can't do their jobs right.

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A nice fiery irrational rant is what powers the internet, thank you for your service. I have a few pointers that will improve your future rants. I'd take out the parts about speeding cars and trucks with unsecured cargo or defective chassis parts, they weaken the main thrust of the your argument that state workers aren't doing a damn thing to make the tunnels safe as those are things that perhaps aren't under their direct control. Instead add in some points about how TANF or WIC recipients should be on FOD duty in the tunnels instead.

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there have been exactly TWO fatalities within the entire Artery/Tunnel system due solely to infrastructure failure, and - more importantly - where the driver's action did not contribute to the crash (Billy Big Biker's crash into the guardrail at the end of the Sumner Tunnel doesn't count, as the motorcyclist was exceeding the tunnel design speed by a significant amount).

But don't let the facts get in the way of your "all state workers are overpaid and lazy" rant.

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It feels like only 13 years ago it opened. Time flies, I guess.

Yeah, and what Roadman said.

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Selection/confirmation bias.

There are thousands of fatal accidents on the road every year. Most are non-notable beyond local coverage. These types of accidents simply get more, and more sensational, coverage because they involve (in)famous parts of our infrastructure.

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And incredibly scary. You can do everything right and something like this happens out of nowhere.

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