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Anything is better than people on a collapsing bridge, obviously. But you can only fence it off when you know its too bad. Checking that can be very expensive. So if you just don't know which of 450 bridges are bad, what do you do? Fence them all of and spark at least outrage? Safest option. Finding out what to do is already expensive

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You can start off with warning signs. I doubt bridges would collapse if pedestrians or bicyclists use them but sings could fend traffic off.

Second, the size of the vehicle is important. Larger vehicles like trucks get these poor bridges lifespan shortened drastically. Trucks and busses could be rerouted on safe bridges and so on.

I generally am not afraid of bridges because they have convinced me that they're safe but if a bridge were to collapse under me and I'd make it out alive I'd probably have a bridge phobia.

Here's a tweet with a picture from December of 2018 of the bridge that collapsed today, showing a large steel beam rusted completely through.

So you could start with the lowest hanging fruit, the bridges that are in such bad condition that people post pictures of them on Twitter.

Here's the tweet you were referring to, I think: https://twitter.com/gpk320/status/1078885655634157569

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