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sshine 3 days ago  [ - ]

> Imagine bridges or houses were built like that.

Bridge building is a lot more conservative when it comes to taking risk in the construction, but that is how we build bridges and lots of bridges collapse because of similar causes:

  - Design Deficiencies
  - Construction Mistakes
  - Maintenance Issues
  - etc.
An average of 128 bridges collapse annually in the United States. More than 17,000 bridges in America are considered "fracture critical" (vulnerable to collapse from a single impact).
teiferer 2 days ago  [ - ]

Engineering doesn't mean all processes are flawless and surely not that all humans participating are perfect.

The collapsing bridges in the US are mainly caused by insufficient maintenance, which is not an engineering problem but a political one. And the vast majority of collapses happens with bridges that are known to be unstable and already blocked for traffic. The engineering part did that, as if it screams "told you so" at the politics which doesn't allocate sufficient funds for maintenance.