It’s been an insane few weeks and I’m still trying to wrap my head around all that’s gone on, and perhaps when I got a better bead on it, I’ll report here. But in the meantime, I got that “stupid day” feeling quite a few times and needed a quick pick me up.

And something I used to love cropped up on my YouTube feed. And all was well in the universe for a little while.

For me, anyway. Not so much for the folks in the videos.

Anyway, there’s a website and a YouTube channel dedicated to a bridge. You may have heard of it in passing or seen the vids yourself, but the bridge is located at the intersection of Gregson and Peabody streets in Durham, North Carolina.

You might have heard it referred to as “The Can-Opener Bridge” because of it’s much lower clearance than the standard. There’s a website dedicated to it called 11foot8.com, and the vids are easy to find on YouTube, too. The guy who runs the site has two cameras set up to watch the intersection and he uploads the crashes every time they happen. There are hundreds of videos online from the past 10 years, some just silly, some you have to wonder about (and some make me imagine what the hell the drivers had to do after the fact when they went back to work, or returned the rental truck, etc.).

The website’s got great info about the history of this bridge and what’s gone on over the years to try and prevent crashes (and answers the questions everyone likes to ask).

The bridge did get a lift thanks to surveys and permission by the railroad during track regrading, so crashes have lessened a bit (it was raised 8 inches and now the bridge clearance is 12’4″). But, they’ve definitely not disappeared entirely. The last one was about a couple weeks ago from what I can tell (and no doubt there will be more, because if there’s anything we like to do in this country, it’s make vehicles and loads bigger and bigger).

Thanks to the news stories and the website, the bridge is a kind of celebrity in the area. TripAdvisor lists it as a tourist site (and one of the few I’d like to go to, silly as it seems).

But yeah, I gotta admit, this particular video below is probably my fave one so far, a surprise I just wasn’t expecting to see and I couldn’t help laughing. When you get to the 2nd camera angle on the 2nd crash, you’ll see an interesting little surprise before the end.

Yeah, if you’ve felt the dumb, I recommend these vids for a couple of minutes (and kids think they’re interesting). Because no matter what you’ve done–unless you’re on the damned vids–you probably haven’t done anything as dumb as these drivers have today.

Have fun.