On the way back from Perigueux today. At the time I thought he knows the road and his height to a ’ T ', but seeing the video afterwards, and his brake lights, perhaps he was not so sure.
Click twice for the full effect.
Will it?
Won’t it?
Phew!
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Yonks ago, I remember closing my eyes as we approached a newly opened tunnel-under-Paris…
First glance told me our car wouldn’t fit… 
Thankfully OH was driving and remained calm while his spouse had a panic attack…
It was spooky with so little traffic and obviously not completely finished in some spots…
When we mentioned this to friends in Herblay, some weeks later… they were amazed at our bravery (the mad Engish) and reckoned they would never, ever use it. 
Many years ago there used to be a steel manufacturer in Rotherham called Steel, Peach and Tozer. I often went there with my container lorry and their premises were accessed by a series of arches in a long building alongside the main road underneath all the offices.
One day, as usual, I went through the arch indicated on my paperwork, they were all numbered, and sailed through it with confidence, no brake lights visible on my vehicle. I cleared the arch, just, but as I emerged on the other side there was a loud bang and, puzzled, looked in my mirror to see clouds of steam mingled with shattered glass twinkling down. I stopped of course in time to see crowds of screaming typists emerging from the building.
Apparently, all those offices were heated with steam and the pipe ran the full length of the building but as it crossed this arch it was ever so slightly lower, and that is what I had hit. No action of any kind was taken against me because no-one could understand, depsite lengthy investigations, how it could have happened after so long without incident. Even my tyres were measured (we did have one vehicle in our otherwise identical fleet with larger tyres, he was ever slightly faster than the rest of us but fell back on the hills) to see if a mistake had been made at the last service. But it remains to this day a mystery.
This flashed back to me as I saw this chap head towards the bridge yesterday. A cattle lorry and trailer but it has liftable rooves to allow for larger beasts and the one on the lorry was slightly higher than the trailer. I thought, before I saw the video at home, that he was confident of his height and the fact that he had been there many times before, but when I saw the brake lights on the video I think he had a very brief ‘oh shit’ moment, ‘have I been through here before with the roof raised?’
I had the same experience in central Rouen. Dreadful place to transit but the toll-free route south from the northern Channel ports passes straight thru’ it. I spose one could take to the country roads …
A fork in the road led right, above ground to a roundabout and was absolutely chokka. Straight on was clear, down an underpass with a concrete barrier down the middle - no turning back.
My camper van is nominally 2.2m high. But it now had two roof hatches and two solar panels on it. I had measured … 2.4m. The sign on the underpass, right at the entrance - no warning further back - read 2.4m . 
I slowed to almost a halt, having a think/panic. Furious hooting behind me. Nothing for it - got to go on. I was praying for the 2.4m clearance to have some extra for luck.
The sign said 2.4m but did that take into account the steep angle of approach? You know those IKEA wardrobe assembly instructions that give you the ceiling height required to swing the wardrobe upright? You need more height than the height of the wardrobe, you need the diagonal of the box. …
I was all prepared for a terrible ripping, tearing sound but - nothing. What about the exit? Also a steep incline upwards? Made it.
Jeepers - I was in a state of high anxiety … quivering jelly, more like.
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A friend of ours used to drive large articulated lorries. On one occasion, many years ago, he needed to bring one through narrow streets in Brighton and the police had to clear the area of parked cars. He came round a corner to find a single parked car in his way but sensing that with a bit of backing up and realigning he thought he could squeeze through. So that is what he set out to do. After a few inching forwards / inching backwards, suddenly there was a man at his cab window. “I’ve been banging on the back to tell you to stop!” says the man. “You’ve demolished the church wall!” “The back” of course was many feet away from our friend in his cab and no way would he have heard any banging.
Next thing, there’s an elderly lady at his elbow and with trepidation he expects to get an earful.
She looks up at him with delight at what he’s done and says: “I can see the sea! I can see the sea!”
He spent many months worrying what he would face in terms of a bill for the damage he had caused. To his relief, the final decision was, because the police were supposed to have completely cleared the streets, he got off scot-free.
Quite right too Sue, sounds to me like a case of ‘opposite tail swing’. When with an artic with a lengthy overhang beyond the wheels, you do a sharp right turn, the rear of the trailer, pivoting on the back wheels, swings left in an arc, totally invisible from the cab.
This is the phenomenon:
There is an even ‘better’ one that I can’t find at the moment where, in Europe this time, a wagon turning from close queues of traffic hooks a car with the underrun bar and drags it right round the corner.
@captainendeavour Alsdo in Rouen I was in a traffic jam and alongside me was a very patient gendarme trying to get a British caravanner to reverse away from the low exit that he had just managed to stop in time from disaster. He was making a meal of it wriggling all over the place and, as I was stationary and alongside the gendarme asked me to do it for him. Just as I climbed down from the cab he made it which was a good job as the traffic had moved on and my wagon was blocking a whole lane.
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I saw the marine equivalent of the ‘will I get under… ?’
I was sitting on the wall outside The Blue Anchor, a few yards upstream of Hammersmith Bridge, enjoying a pint of Fuller’s ‘London Pride’.
There was a massive high tide, as high as any I had seen until the one in the photo. A ‘grockle barge’ (Cornish for pleasure steamer) approached. The tide was still making so there soon came a point at which there was no turning back.
There was a horrendous crash and the sound of splintering glass. The pilot house, up fwd, had just clipped the bottom beam of the bridge.
Momentum carried him through, with sounds of tearing GRP and ply. He came alongside just where I was sitting. Presumably other staff on board took the passengers in hand.
The pilot came ashore, dripping blood from nasty cuts to his face. “My first time upstream to Hampton Court. I’m usually down to Greenwich”. Poor chap. Must have been awful as the bridge approached.
I had my car there and knew the way to Ch X West London …
The thing is, tide tables are a best guess. An unusual high tide, perhaps with a layer of cold fresh water (from days of rain in the watershed) under it going out, and low atmos pressure, will raise the high water point significantly. The pilot would have been assured he would pass under the bridge but conditions on the day made it otherwise.
Here’s the bridge with a monster tide. No’but a LiLo getting under that.
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