taking a bite out of a double decker

You might remember this post from a few months back chuckling at some people's inability to read prominently-displayed road signage, or possibly their inability, having successfully read it, to realise its relevance to the vehicle they're currently driving. We had a rather alarming close-to-home demonstration of the phenomenon just a couple of days ago; not only was it right here in Newport, but it involved one of the buses specifically provided by the council to get pupils to the school both of our girls attend. Not, thankfully, the specific bus that Nia and Alys catch in the mornings - they tend to get this one or this one while, as far as I can make out, the incident occurred on this one. 

Anyway, it was the standard double-decker bus going under low bridge scenario, or, more accurately, most of the bus going under while a small amount off the top got left behind. The various articles featured prominently on national news show the scary aftermath of the incident. The Metro article luridly uses the word "decapitated" to describe what happened to the bus, clearly in an attempt to draw in some ghoulish readers who expect that to be the fate of some of the passengers. This is clearly theoretically possible, but I can't find any evidence of it ever happening, and in fact death and even serious injury are less common in these sort of incidents than you might imagine. A very quick and lazy Google search yields a host of similar incidents:

• This one in Leicester in 1958, a textbook encounter with a railway bridge, this one still in existence. No injuries as the bus was empty at the time.
• Another incident at exactly the same bridge in 2009, this time with a busload of schoolchildren, some of whom sustained minor injuries.
• A much more serious incident in Cwmbran in 1982 where six people were killed. The article is commendably non-lurid about the details, but you would assume it's a bit of an all-or-nothing thing: either you get a bridge in the face at 30mph, in which case we can all imagine the consequences, or you duck and you don't, in which case you probably get away with cuts and bruises. Anyway, the bridge in question was demolished shortly afterwards and that part of the old railway partly used as the route of the new A4051; the bridge was in the location now occupied by this roundabout but the stubs of the old embankment are still visible. 
• An incident in Eccles last year; this time the offending bridge was an aqueduct carrying the Bridgewater Canal (so it was, in a very real sense, a "Bridgewater water bridge"). No deaths but three people with serious injuries.
• One in Bath in 2023; a relatively poor effort here with only the front section being caved in; roof integrity was largely maintained; no injuries.
• One in Tottenham in 2016; five people hospitalised.
• One in Macclesfield in 2011; a few minor injuries.
• One in Swansea in 2021 with one fatality; it seems insensitive to speculate too much about the details but she apparently died 11 days later in hospital, which I assume (though I am not a doctor) is longer than you'd last if your head had come off.
• An interesting central London variation in 2015 where a large overhanging branch, rather than the usual railway bridge, was the culprit. Again, a few minor injuries.
• Other similar occurrences in Bournemouth, Rochdale, York, Coventry, Kilmarnock, Edinburgh and no doubt others too numerous to mention.

The common factors here seem to be:

• driver unfamiliarity either with the route, driving a double-decker as opposed to a single-decker bus, or even with the concept of bus-driving at all
• unscheduled route amendments due to either roadworks, other traffic issues, getting lost, taking a short-cut back to the depot
• in general railway bridges as the immovable obstacle, although there are some variations involving tree branches, canal aqueducts and hospital footbridges. 

The potential decapitation thing did put me in mind of this tweet describing a dimly-recalled childhood incident:

weird childhood recollection: someone telling me a story about a 4-man bobsleigh team whose vehicle left the track and hit a tree, neatly decapitating all the riders and careering off down a hill. weirdest bit is I recall it being my Dad that told it to me https://t.co/Bgr5dG7L5b

— Dave Thomas (@electrichalibut) February 16, 2022

The incident described, assuming I'm recalling the anecdote correctly, never happened as far as I can tell, though people have obviously died in painful ways while competing in luge and bobsleigh races. In general this sort of thing is extremely rare, not least because for good and sound evolutionary reasons the human head is pretty tenaciously tethered to the human body; people whose heads were prone to flying off in high winds tended not to survive long enough to reproduce. You actually have to try pretty hard to induce your head to come off, usually by doing something incredibly ill-advised such as this.  

Lastly, those inspired by the previous post to frenzied stats-nerdery in relation to UK bridge signage will be fascinated to hear that the location of the crash on East Usk Road is not the type specimen for the (fairly common, I'd imagine) 12'6"/3.8m height combination; this is to be found in Kings Norton in the southern suburbs of Birmingham.