Indonesia's 'Golden Gate Bridge' collapses; 3 dead - World news - Asia-Pacific - msnbc.com It looks to me like a lot of joints failed... They called it their Golden Gate Bridge too...
Looks like it wasn't a very good copy of the Golden Gate Bridge There is another copy of the Golden Gate Bridge in Lisbon Portugal. Fortunately for the Portuguese, the one in Lisbon was designed and built by the same company that did the GG Bridge instead of being an inept imitation.
There is another good copy of the Golden Gate here in SacTown on one of the campuses... scaled down...
Did you notice in the Indonesion bridge pictures that the main bridge cable and towers were still standing even though the tours were twisted. The deck and stucture just fell off the cable supporting it. If it had been even a 1/2 arsed bridge design, a section would have fallen and the rest of the roadway stayed in place. As long as the main towers and cables stand, there is no reason for a suspension bridge roadway to completely collapse like a house of cards.
At the risk of getting political, it's GOVERNMENT REGULATION that prevents this kind of thing from being a frequent occurrence here. People who think the government can't do anything right should consider that it's the government that sets the safety regulations that make life in 2011 so much less hazardous than it was in 1911. Without these regulations, sub-standard construction would be a lot more common than it is now, or would be as common as it is in much of the third world. Indeed, there are many areas where I think safety regulations should be much more strict than they are. But without government, there'd be none at all. I'm not a fan of our government or of either of our political parties, but building regulations are one good thing that comes out of government.
Oh, come on, Daniel! Government deregulated the banking industry and pretty much gutted all regulations regarding offshore drilling, and I can't think of a single bad thing that came out of that!
+1 For what I beleive to be a balanced view of the government's proper and necessary role, and that of the citizenry for that matter, you might try The Price of Civilization by Jeffery Sachs. This interview with Charlie Rose is sort of a video summary: Charlie Rose - Jeffrey Sachs A free pdf download of the book is available here: The Price of Civilization - Jeffrey D. Sachs .pdf from uploading.com!
