A driver on Memorial Drive during a pounding rainstorm hit an abutment at the Boston University Bridge, sending his car tumbling off at around 8 p.m. Saturday, Cambridge acting fire chief Thomas Cahill Jr. said.
What was referred to as a rollover likely resulted from poor visibility during one of several recent incidences of wild weather during the hottest month ever recorded in Massachusetts.
“It just makes sense that it would be storm related,” Cahill said, as first-responders were handling flooding and other issues around the region that night.
The car busted through the guardrail and “most of the brick on the bridge” over the William J. Reid rotary, a scanner call said Saturday. There was “significant” damage, police said. The area is in Cambridgeport near Magazine Beach and the Morse School.
A call for help came in at 8:04 p.m. – not just from the person whose car went off the embankment into a marshy area between the road and Charles River, but from passersby. “You could see the edge of the vehicle. So there were multiple calls coming in,” Cahill said.
The driver was banged up, but was walking before being taken to a hospital, Cahill said. Officers on the scene called him conscious and alert.
Traffic was shut down briefly on Memorial on the inbound side of the bridge while the car was extracted, according to scanner reports.
Teams from the state departments of Transportation and Department of Conservation and Recreation came to clean up debris, and Cambridge fire teams left the scene at around 9:30 p.m., Cahill said.
A Cambridge Fire Department watermark was removed from the feature image used for this post.
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Incredible how this article (and the emergency personnel) instantly shifts the blame away from the obviously reckless driver. The speed limit on this bridge is 20 mph. Does anyone think this driver was adhering to that limit? Speeding is so taken for granted in our city that even the police don’t notice it.
On google street view, you can see that the crumpled steel guardrail in the photo is actually a patch job from the last time someone plowed through this brick wall. Chalk it up to the ongoing maintenance costs of automotive infrastructure.
Yes but cyclists run red lights. We need to get those menacing bicycles off our streets.
Oh that pesky automotive infrastructure that moves food, products, and emergency vehicles.
I’m convinced! No cars! No bikes! And, pedestrians are always jaywalking, so no pedestrians! Only turkeys, ducks and geese!