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Comment by themerone | Hacker News Reader

Why would a driver think a ship's horn was signaling them?

AIUI most souls on the bridge were construction workers filling potholes, not drivers. But either way I'd have thought a certain amount of horn blowing would catch my attention just for being out of the ordinary, even though it's also not ordinary for ships to (need to) signal me.

Ya the people on the bridge would have less than 4 minutes to figure out the ship is crashing then to clear 2500 feet of bridge. When you're working with construction equipment you'd probably not notice till you had seconds left.

4 minutes is a lot longer to save your life than nothing? And do you really think that's the answer, that was the calculation on the ship - well they only have 4 minutes until we hit anyway, so there's nothing they can do, not worth it?

I wasn't criticising anyone, I was 1) asking if that happened; 2) asking why it might not have.

I think the answer is much more likely that the loss of power disabled the horn (as others have suggested) than that the crew thought it wasn't worthwhile because there was insufficient time for anyone on the bridge to fare any better anyway!

So, it turns out they did call in an emergency and the police did shutdown the bridge. The police had no direct way of reaching the workers and weren't going to wander out there with an imminent impact. So, evidently, no there was not enough time.

'So,' I said that in my initial comment. The police may not have had a way to reach them, but the horn would have. There was a lot more time than none, who's to say if it would have helped. I think the correct answer is as given by others, that actually the loss of power would have disabled the horn too.

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