Each year, hundreds of drivers of rental and commercial trucks fail to recognize their vehicle’s height and collide with bridges and overpasses, creating public safety hazards, traffic delays, and damage to bridges across New York State.  From 2021 through 2022, there were a combined 808 reported bridge strikes in New York.  Bridge strikes are potentially hazardous to motorists and first responders and have caused needless inconveniences for local communities, but these incidents are 100 percent preventable.   
The first part of this session will outline how the NYS Bridge Hit Task Force, led by the New York State DOT, employed a multi-discipline (“3E”) approach following Governor Hochul’s announcement of a campaign to raise awareness and enforcement to mitigate bridge hits.  In addition to outreach efforts such as the “Check Your Height, Know It’s Right” campaign, opportunities and barriers for sharing data with navigation app providers (such as Waze, etc.) will be discussed.  Lessons learned by the Task Force will be shared.
The Eastern Transportation Coalition (TETC) has a long history of bringing members together to solve common transportation problems.  The second part of the program will include an overview of how TETC is supporting the bridge hit mitigation efforts in New York and beyond.  The Coalition is organized to support Regional media messaging campaigns, influence technology partners in the private sector, and share best practices among members.  An overview of TETC organization and services will help NASTO attendees engage with other members and get involved with the 3 program committees (TSMO, Freight, and Innovation).

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