Austin traffic is horrible. Today on the way home from San Antonio, the lower deck of IH-35 was closed, and traffic was backed up. The cause, another jumper was threatening to jump off the bridge into oncoming traffic. This time the jumper was at the bridge on the lower deck of IH-35 by St. David’s Hospital. The north and south bound lanes were all closed. Brianna and I were in the first row of cars that formed the closed section of IH-35 so we were able to drive by on the access road as everything was happening. This isn’t the first time that somebody has closed IH-35 by threatening to jump off a bridge into traffic.
My engineering brain just won’t let this go by without offering a solution. This one is free for use. I should probably make a drawing or two and send it to the mayer.
First, we take a large open bed truck, the kind the good-guys always jump into when their lives are threatened in the movies. If we can’t find a big open bed truck we can use a trash container truck, it doesn’t matter to me.
Two, we fill the truck with shredded foam. I understand that all municipalities are in a budget crisis now, so we will need some foam for cheap. Fortunately this is also easy to get. Brianna used to work for a foam supplier. This company would take large sheets of various types of foam rubber and die cut shapes from the sheets. The borders of the rubber (the same boarders you get when cutting biscuits from dough) would be thrown out and picked up by the trash company. Each day there was at least one and often two dumpsters full of foam scrap. This excess and unused foam waste could be shredded into small bits and used to fill the bed of the jumper rescue truck.
Three, we put the truck and the foam in its bed on stand-by near star flight. The next time the call goes out to close the IH-35 due to a jumper, the truck is dispatched to the overpass. Once the truck is in position the police officers would walk up to the jumper and push the jumper off the bridge and onto the foam in the truck. If the officers don’t want to push the jumper off the bridge, they could call me, or find a volunteer from the hundreds of cars now backed up on the highway to push the jumper off.
On Saturday night when returning from my parent’s house, MOPAC, the other major highway, was closed due to a wreck. Unfortunately there would be nobody to push off the bridge in these situations so my foam truck wouldn’t have helped.