Bridge phobias are so common at the Delaware Memorial Bridge that police escorts help people get from one side of the bridge to the other.
Divers returned to the site of the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore after challenging conditions overnight hampered their search. The six construction workers who were repairing potholes on the bridge when a container ship collided with it are now presumed dead. Meanwhile, the disaster triggers in some travelers a debilitating fear of driving over bridges.
Some people posted on social media to talk about Gephyrophobia, or the fear of traveling over bridges.
Some who suffer from the phobia drive with their seatbelts off and windows open, “just in case the bridge collapses and you need an escape route,” one person said in a TikTok video.
In 2022, Tory Forbes told Inside Edition a bridge collapsing under her is her worst nightmare. Inside Edition accompanied Forbes as she drove across the Delaware Memorial Bridge. She tearfully shook in fear and suffered from a panic attack as she made it across the bridge.
Bridge phobias are so common that police at the Delaware Memorial Bridge offer escorts to help people get from one side of the bridge to the other. One officer at the bridge in Delaware says he believes there will be a rise in people requesting an escort after the Baltimore bridge collapse.
Calls from moments before the disaster in Baltimore have recently been released, revealing pleas to stop vehicles from crossing the Francis Scott Key Bridge before the impact.
“I need one of you guys on the south side, one of you guys on the north side, hold all traffic on the Key Bridge. There’s a ship approaching that just lost their steering,” a police dispatcher said.
A captain of a training ship described what it must have been like on board the container ship that accidentally crashed into the bridge’s support beam. “There’s no scarier feeling than the ship going quiet underneath, silence on the bridge,” the captain tells Inside Edition. “If you have a full blackout and lose propulsion and steering, you’re really at the mercy of physics.”
The FBI diver leading the search says he expects his team to be working at the site for another week.
