Police cleared traffic and pedestrians from bridge as cargo ship went nearly full throttle through South Carolina harbor
A large cargo ship lost control of its engines and went nearly full throttle through a South Carolina harbor prompting the closure of one of the busiest bridges in the state.
The incident comes after an out-of-control cargo ship smashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore on 26 March after losing power, bringing the span down and killing six construction workers.
Harbor pilots in Charleston on Wednesday were able to help the nearly 1,000ft (300-meter) ship, which was going nearly 20mph (32km/h), get under the Ravenel Bridge safely and eventually anchor several miles offshore while the Coast Guard investigates, said Randy Preston, commander of the US Coast Guard’s Charleston section.
Yep. This and Boeing. It’s astonishing how easily manipulated our view of reality is, and it’s all because we can’t tell what’s a real risk and what’s not. Humans are stupid at assessing risk in today’s enormous world, we just did not evolve for it.
For example, people think getting randomly shot, murdered or raped is likely. Half of gun deaths are suicides and the vast majority of the remainder are bad people in bad places. The vast majority of rapes and murders are by someone known to the victim. (That’s not victim blaming, only saying such violence doesn’t often come out of the clear blue sky.)
OTOH, getting smeared to death on the road is truly random. Yet we all happily jump in our cars, roll hard down the interstate and think nothing of it. The news doesn’t harp on it, that sort of death is understood, nothing sexy to report.