Wednesday, June 16, 2010

IS IT SAFE?

Sometime last week, Honey Dearest and I decided to take elevated Kelana Jaya-Subang Jaya elevated route to go back home. It was around 5.15pm and we thought that traffic wouldn't be bad (sometimes you can see cars basically motionless on the entire stretch of the elevated portion). Our plan is to take the exit right after SJMC and head to Sunway Pyramid for a quick bite.

OK, so the traffic is heavy and with the exit being an a very sharp angle and only a single lane, traffic starts to build up. The lady in the Myvi infront of us seemed to be utilising her time well, by putting up make up, at at times, I believe, removing some body hair (that was how it looked like from our car).

The jam, we can take. However, the entire road was wobbly beneath of us. We really felt it as we we stationary most of the time. So, my question is... is the whole stretch safe ? I am no engineer, but I am sure when they plan for it, they must have calculated the loading etc. However, when they did the calculation, did they consider the weight of stationary cars on the entire stretch of the elevated portion ?

Honey Dearest never wants to be on that road during peak hours, ever again.

1 comment:

JLTan said...

Yes, there is a component in the civil engineering course and in the traffic management course that gets one to expect that a stretch of road with stationary cars and laden trucks would be heavier. People are taught to build roads to with-stand the worse conditions.

However, there can still be an element of cheating; ie. people who supply inferior quality building materials, building workers who deliver service of lesser quality, etc that the courses do not account for. Engineers can also make mistakes in their calculations.

I don't know which explanation applies in the situation you wrote about. I only know that we humans are far from perfect. May God help us.