After Corbu

Money quote from today’s New York Times article about the Minnesota bridge collapse:

“Bolts are better,” Mr. Peterson said, “but we wouldn’t consider anything wrong with rivets.”

Yeah, except for the rivets not being strong enough, there wasn’t anything wrong with them at all…

Strange thing though: the NTSB let everyone know that something may have been wrong with the bridge gusset plate design (a conclusion they arrived at in record time), but didn’t say what the problem may actually be. This makes the announcement useless as a safety precaution, as the problem certainly can’t be fixed on other bridges if it’s unclear what’s wrong.

However, the announcement does work well as a political precaution, helping to deflect criticism of Republican infrastructure cuts. Funny how that worked out…