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A Bridge Too Far - Irresponsible Drivers Give British Waterways The Hump

British Waterways is asking speeding motorists to slow down when crossing the 200 year-old hump-back bridges that span the nation’s historic canal network.

Each year, British Waterways spends up to £2.5million fixing the damage caused by irresponsible drivers, diverting vital resources away from maintaining the 2,000 miles of canals and rivers in its care.

The majority of hump-back bridges were designed in the 18th and 19th centuries to carry horse-drawn carts over canals and are now synonymous with the inland waterways. British Waterways looks after 1,800 historic bridges and estimates that at least two are struck every week by modern vehicles, which are much faster and often larger than the traffic that engineers such as James Brindley originally designed them for.

The growing number of bridge strikes comes at a time when there is reduced funding available to look after Britain’s 2,000 mile network of canals and rivers which includes the UK’s third largest collection of Listed structures, more than half of which are bridges.

Nigel Crowe, British Waterways’ head of heritage, explains: “Whenever you go over a hump-back bridge in Britain you are likely to be going over a canal. Often officially listed as being of special architectural or historical significance, these bridges have to be painstakingly repaired at considerable cost.

“We’re working with the County Surveyors’ Society and local authorities to improve signage and road markings, but frankly, if motorists just slowed down a bit and took more care and attention then we’d not be defacing our heritage in this way on a day-to-day basis.”

Instantly recognisable windows into our industrial past, humpback bridges were built using traditional materials such as lime mortar and locally sourced stone or brick. Damaged sections of bridges are replaced with like-for-like materials, using skills passed down over many generations.

In practice, having hit the bridge, most drivers leave the scene without reporting the accident meaning that British Waterways cannot recoup the cost of the damage from the driver’s insurance company. Nigel concludes: “Every inconsiderate driver who ‘hits and runs’ in this way is costing Britain’s valuable heritage dear.”