5 crushed to death in collapse of overpass

Waterbury Republican-American ^ | October 2, 2006 | Associated Press

[Moonman62]

Why? The dispatchers didn't know the overpass was going to collapse. Like I said, it's an extremely rare event. If the debris was bad enough it would have caused traffic to shut down on its own.

[Disambiguator]

Maybe he calculated it using metric "tonnes".

Either way, it hurts.

[shekkian]

Were the guys in charge of the Big Dig also in charge of this?

[Snoopers-868th]

Low bid!

[3niner]

Since this article is from Canada, they were probably using metric tons (1000 Kg). This would increase the total by about 10%, but this probably wasn't what was meant by the "check the math" person.

[sittnick]

Since this article is from Canada, they were probably using metric tons (1000 Kg). This would increase the total by about 10%, but this probably wasn't what was meant by the "check the math" person.

The article was printed in Connecticut, and the span length is indicated in feet (as in 65 feet), so I would presume that the other measurements (ESPECIALLY those that are the same or similar to U.S. equivalents) would be rendered using the U.S. standard. The usage of "metric tonnes" betrays the original premise of the metric system, anyway. The system was supposed to simplify things with a consistent use of base names and prefixes. They really should use megagram instead of tonne if they really believed in these principals.