REPORTAGE
This is the main track to explain the collapse of the Mirepoix-sur-Tarn bridge occurred Monday north-east of Toulouse, costing the lives of at least two people: the weight of the truck. Around 8 am that morning, the bridge over the river collapses as a truck and a car pass through it. Limited to 19 tons, this work of the 1930s would have had to bear a much greater weight according to the Toulouse public prosecutor. Why did the heavyweight borrowed a work that was clearly forbidden to him? Our journalist traveled with a truck driver to try to understand.
"The GPS knows, you're going to have trouble"
It has become an indispensable tool for road users: GPS. Once his cargo is loaded, Franck gets on board his truck and lights a GPS application on his smartphone. "We give you an address, a street, you are from the other side of France, how can you know [that a bridge is forbidden]?", He explains to the microphone of Europe 1. " The GPS knows, you're going to have trouble, "he summarizes. Witness of a pre-GPS era, an old atlas is placed on the ground, next to the coffee maker, and it indicates the bridges and level crossings prohibited to trucks.
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But when the detour is too long to meet deadlines, "we have to move at one time or another," says Franck. But for Louis-Michel Barraud, of the National Federation of Carriers of Normandy, Franck's attitude is a "monumental mistake". For him, GPS stupefy drivers. "I happened to ask a driver why he had taken a specific route, and he said, 'It's not me, it's the GPS that made me go there.' It's stupid, man is very important in this business, "he says.
For him, it is essential to train, and especially educate, young drivers to the most reliable technology in the business: the road map.