Driver dies after truck hits, collapses bridge over Detroit freeway

DETROIT -- The driver of a waste-hauling truck died Friday morning after hitting a pedestrian bridge over a Detroit freeway, pulling it down onto the roadway below and snarling rush-hour traffic, officials said.

Reports of a bridge collapse came into police about 6 a.m. They determined a boom on a waste-hauling truck was extended too high to go under the bridge, Michigan State Police Lt. Michael Shaw said at the scene.

"When the boom struck the bridge, it actually pulled the bridge down with it," Shaw said.

State transportation officials said the bridge was in "fair to good" condition, meaning that it was safe for use before being hit by the truck. No one was on the bridge when it fell, Shaw said, and the timing of the crash prevented it from being much worse.

"It's just the beginning of rush hour, so nobody else was struck," Shaw said. "If this would have happened maybe an hour later it would have been a lot worse."

Shaw said the driver, whose identity has not been released, was taken to a hospital and died. He wasn't wearing a seat belt, which may have been a factor in his death, Shaw said. Two other vehicles were struck by debris, but no one else was injured, Shaw said.

About four hours after the crash, the truck was on the side of the freeway with its windshield wipers still moving.

"There's concrete all over... It's amazing, I've never seen anything like this," CBS Detroit reporter Charlie Langton said. "The pedestrian overpass is totally down, smashed to bits, the sign for Warren Avenue is smashed to bits. It's just a mass of concrete and metal, it's incredible."

Driver Gary Kleinart said his vehicle was hit by a piece of the bridge.

"I was just driving south on... Southfield, and all of a sudden it just came down right in front of me... it hit my car," said Kleinart. "The whole top is smashed in and the back window is all blown out."

"I've got a couple of scrapes from the glass hitting me, but other than that I think I'm OK," Kleinart said.

Detroit Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford was among the first drivers to stop at the scene, the team said. Stafford, who was on his way to the team's practice facility in Allen to prepare for Sunday's road game against the New York Jets, was picked up by team security.

Traffic was being forced off the freeway in both directions, officials said. The Michigan Department of Transportation said crews hope to be able to clear the bridge from the roadway and reopen the freeway after police complete their on-scene investigation Friday.

At freeway speeds, "momentum is enough to take down the bridge" when hit by a truck, Shaw said.

Diane Cross, spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of Transportation, said "it's an older bridge" that wasn't replaced when the freeway was rebuilt in 2009.

Cross said it's too soon to tell if the bridge's "weakened state" due to age contributed to its collapse.

"It still had many years of service left," Cross said. "It's only down because a truck pulled it down."