Police in Warwickshire are investigating how an articulated lorry came to fall from a flyover carrying the M42 over the M6 Toll road. The unladen lorry is believed to have collided with a car travelling in the same direction over the flyover before crashing onto the motorway below. It is understood that the lorry hit the safety barrier head on. No-one was killed in the incident.

Questions about the adequacy of bridge parapet safety barriers were raised following the incident last week. But one bridge specialist said no immediate conclusions should be drawn.

“Motorway parapets are designed and tested to take the impact of a glancing blow and to absorb some of the energy, rather than deflect a vehicle back into the road,” said independent bridges consultant Richard Fish FCIHT. “However this appears to be a one off incident and there is no need for a knee jerk reaction to it.

“The other option is a high containment parapet made of concrete, used when a road crosses a railway,” he added. “But the financial cost of high containment barriers are difficult to justify everywhere. You could design out risk, but at what expense?”

The Highways Agency said bridge parapets are designed to provide an appropriate level of containment and there is nothing to suggest this was not the case where the incident took place.

Photo: Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service.

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