11 Foot 8 Bridge

About

The 11 Foot 8 Bridge, also known as the Canopener Bridge, is an overpass in Durham, North Carolina known for its numerous collisions with trucks passing underneath. Officially called the Norfolk Southern–Gregson Street Overpass, the bridge gained much notoriety online after a local resident began posting video footage of the accidents in mid 2008.

Origin

According to the single topic blog 11Foot8,^[1] photographs of trucks damaged by the bridge were published in The Herald-Sun newspaper throughout the 1950s and 1960s (shown below).

Spread

On April 14th, 2008, the North Carolina resident Jürgen Henn launched the yovo68 YouTube channel, which features short clips of trucks having their roofs torn off while attempting to pass underneath the bridge. Over the next several years, Henn posted over 100 crash videos to the channel.

On March 18th, 2009, the local news station WRAL^[2] reported on Henn's YouTube channel. On May 29th, 2013, YouTuber Peter Hemmings uploaded a montage of trucks colliding with the bridge (shown below, left). Within three years, the video gained over 4.4 million views and 2,300 comments. On October 26th, 2012, the StupidityAndMore YouTube channel posted another montage titled "The Toughest Bridge in the World" (shown below, right).

On May 12th, 2016, YouTuber yovo68 uploaded video footage of a new warning sign placed over the bridge (shown below).

In October 2019, the city of Durham began work on the bridge, raising it to a height of 12 feet 4 inches.^[3]

Search Interest

External References