New Sensor Technology Helps Make Bridges Safer

COLLEGE PARK, Md. - Millions of U.S. drivers cross faulty or obsolete bridges every day, U.S. highway statistics show, but it's too costly to fix all these spans or adequately monitor their safety, says a University of Maryland researcher who has developed a new, affordable early warning system.

This wireless technology could avert the kind of bridge collapse that killed 13 and injured 145 along Minneapolis' I-35W on Aug. 1, 2007, he says - and do so at one-one-hundredth the cost of current wired systems.