Why this huge roundabout route? The route looks like autobahn almost all the way. Fixed comment about weight: 200 tons is 400,000 lbs--it's heavy but not absurdly so.
We'd put this on the road in the US without much fanfare. You'd need some civil engineers to check the road ratings and clearances.
Edit: I can't read. It's 200 tons not 100 tons. That's getting heavy, but I would still expect things like the autobahn to be able to handle that with an appropriate carrier.
For these kinds of cargo, you can't decide the route yourself. You ask to the government bureau which handles the roads with your specs, and they give you the route after checking it with the road specs and clearances. Insurance also needs these documents.
After you insure your cargo, you take the exact route the bureau provided, and if something happens due to road conditions, government pays your damages.
Dad was working in insurance. This is the standard procedure.
> After you insure your cargo, you take the exact route the bureau provided, and if something happens due to road conditions, government pays your damages.
That is not how it works in Texas.
Yes, the state gives you a route. However, it is always the responsibility of the carrier to make sure that everything on the way has appropriate ratings and heights. If the state runs your 15' load under a 14' 6" bridge or runs your 80,000lb load over a 40,000lb rated bridge, it is incumbent upon the driver/carrier to not hit the bridge or collapse it.
I knew several of the people who used to work out these permits. If they missed something, sometimes a driver would have to back a load up (yes, in reverse as the load would be too big to turn around) for 20 or 30 miles to change routes. If you were on an unusual route, for some reason, the maps they used didn't always have the correct heights marked for every interchange.
If I had to guess the biggest problem for most roads is the height, followed by the width. Weight might still come into play for some potential routes that otherwise had enough clearance. It's not clear from that video but it's quite possible the load fits in the 14' height limit for interstates in the state of Texas. That would make this at least twice as tall.
Yeah, I hadn't thought about it, but you're probably correct that height is the issue.
The Jochenstein lock that was mentioned is 7.8m and they barely cleared under it. That would be quite a tall load and then you have to add the height of the carrier. You can easily run out of options for something that tall and the German routes look like they use cloverleaf interchanges which could easily be obstacles.
> load fits in the 14' height limit for interstates in the state of Texas
There are special routes up and out from the Houston ship channel that use mostly diamond interchanges that could accommodate even something like this. However, the roads that this would have traversed in Germany are laughably small by Texas freeway standards so I can certainly see there being no way to get between the two points.
I gave a couple of physics talks where I used the "fasten seatbelt" sign on a series of slides introducing a controversial topic (weak value amplification). I told the audiences beforehand that they just needed to stay in their seats for these slides and we'd discuss once I'd laid everything out.
During my physics PhD I built my own Segway (and a second one with a power tool company who came to me after first asking tlb) and did a bunch of projects with a high-power laser cutter that I got funding for in our lab. I included these on my resume and they were much easier for interviewers to talk to me about than my PhD work. I think they also helped me stand out a bit. Receiving positive feedback about these projects gave me confidence to sell myself as someone who could build things.
I wonder if your eyes move around a lot. It's known that we can see flicker in things like LEDs on a clock when our eyes move fast enough that subsequent flashes are sufficiently separated in the field of vision, particularly in our peripheral vision, and I've also experienced this with LED headlights while driving.
this is not a complaint, just asking how this is relevant to HN since the post didn't have any particular context. Clearly, this is a very interesting topic given more context and as the rest of the comments on the post do.
re: context - It is interesting, that is the context.
You can flag a post if it seems “not relevant” or “out of context” like the GO said. IMO that’s only really for posts in New or if you happen to find something off with a post after reading it. In general, I don’t think that should happen much on the front page - if it’s there it’s usually an indication that people found the post interesting!
