NTSB says there was ‘no excuse’ for missed safety check and calls for urgent assessment of 68 bridges across US

The top US transportation safety agency said this week that the deadly Baltimore bridge collapse last March, after a cargo ship hit a support pillar, had been 30 times above the acceptable risk of breaking up if a vessel struck it and there was “no excuse” for a vital safety check having been missed years before.

In its investigation of the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge across a vital shipping channel in Baltimore, which killed six construction workers, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said that the Maryland transportation authority failed to complete a recommended structural vulnerability assessment that would have shown the bridge was extremely prone to a collapse.