The end of the year is a good time to reflect on the notable events that occurred over the past year. The media often prints lists of what they deem to have been the top news stories. One of the top news stories for 2013 in Western Washington must certainly be the I-5 bridge “collapse” that occurred in Skagit County in late May of 2013. For those who don’t know, I-5 is the main north-south thoroughfare through Washington between Oregon and British Columbia. An estimated 71,000 vehicles travel south over the Skagit River Bridge on I-5 each day.
On May 23, 2103, a tractor-trailer with an oversized load struck the overhead portal and multiple sway braces on the far right side of the bridge’s truss structure. According to a preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the impact “caused significant damage to the load-bearing members of the bridge’s superstructure, resulting in the failure and subsequent collapse of the northernmost bridge span.” Miraculously, only two other vehicles were on the span at the time it fell and the occupants were rescued injured, but alive. Tragically, 8 days later, a Washington State Patrol trooper was killed by a truck driver while directing traffic that had been detoured as a result of the bridge closure.
According to the NTSB report, as the tractor-trailer with the oversized load and it’s pilot car approached the Skagit River Bridge, “another southbound tractor-trailer overtook and passed the oversize load in the left lane. The driver of the oversize load reported to investigators that he felt “crowded” by the passing combination vehicle so he moved to the right.” It was his move to the right that caused his load to strike the bridge sending it crashing into the river.
In the days and weeks following this event, the media, government officials, and the public talked of the bridge “collapse,” “crumbling infrastructure, “decaying bridges,” “government funding,” and a variety of other issues in an attempt to make sense of what happened. Over and over, it was referred to as “the I-5 bridge collapse.” But isn’t this just blaming the bridge? After all, what did the bridge do wrong? Wasn’t it just standing there minding its own business when someone struck it? Certainly, a bridge that withstood a load of approximately 71,000 vehicles per day for decades wasn’t deficient or substandard. The bridge didn’t fall down on its own. It didn’t crumble and fall into the water without external forces being put upon it. Numerous other trucks, even with oversized loads, had crossed this bridge hundreds, even thousands, of times without the bridge crashing into the river below it. So – why blame the bridge for “collapsing?”
I know, I know. It was just a bridge. An inanimate object. Why am I getting so worked up over this? Because it isn’t just a bridge crash – this is just another example of people blaming the victim. Instead of accepting and acknowledging that bad things can and do happen in the world – and that there is a reason why these things happen – people subconsciously try to blame the victim who was injured as a result of the tragedy. If you pause to reflect on that, you will realize that you see examples of this all the time. For example, if a woman is raped, people will often ask “what was she wearing?” “Was she in a bad neighborhood when it happened?” “Was she drunk?” If a person slips and falls in a store, people will ask “what kind of shoes was he wearing?” If someone is injured in an automobile collision, people will often ask “was he wearing a seatbelt?” However, none of those things focus on the more relevant questions such as “did the rape victim give consent or was this an unwanted sexual attack?” “Did the store have a policy of cleaning its aisles on a regular basis and was the aisle clean when the person fell?” “Why did the automobile collision occur – were traffic laws violated?” Those questions go to the heart of determining why something actually happened.
It is only when you know why something happened that you can know where to assign blame. If you automatically assign blame to the victim, you are missing an opportunity to make your community safer by holding the wrongdoer accountable for their actions that caused harm. When you look at it that way, you can see that blaming the victim (under the false assumption that “I would never do what that person did, therefore that would never happen to me”) actually makes us less safe because it completely avoids placing the responsibility for harm where it belongs – on the wrongdoer.
So, what do you think? Did the I-5 bridge “collapse?” In other words, did the bridge do something wrong? Or, did it fail because the careless driver of the oversized load ran into it causing it to fall? Was the driver wrong to move to the right, knowing that his load was oversized and that he was on a bridge? Or did the driver of the other truck, who overtook an oversized load on a bridge, bear some responsibility for making the driver of the oversized load feel “crowded?”
