WYPR, April 2025
Some of the nation’s most prominent bridges are susceptible to ship collision and collapse similar to the Francis Scott Key Bridge disaster that occurred a year ago. A new study from Johns Hopkins University found that the Key Bridge collapse was not a rare occurrence and some of the busiest bridges in the United States could collapse within the next few decades.
“The major finding is that the collision risk for us bridges is very significant, and that we’ve underestimated it,” said Michael Shields, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Engineering and co-author of the study. “If individual bridges are expected to see collision events every few decades, then that means that across the nation, we should expect collision events to occur every few years, every three to five years, and actually, historically, that’s what we’ve seen. This is entirely consistent with historical precedent.” The study outlines the bridges most at risk within the United States and estimates how often they can expect a collision.
