Tractor-Trailer Flips After Hitting Overpass in New York, Dashcam Video Shows
A sharply angled bridge strike on Monday turned a routine late-morning drive on I-87 into a close call caught on camera. The dashcam footage, recorded by a nearby AAA Carting truck, shows a tractor-trailer clipping the South Broadway Bridge overpass in South Nyack, New York, at around 12:20 p.m., then tipping onto its side before sliding into a parked 2025 Toyota sedan on the shoulder.
The driver, identified by New York State Police as 50-year-old Pernell Harris of York, South Carolina, was ticketed for operating an over-height vehicle. He was hauling a 2020 Mack tractor-trailer, and according to police, the rig was taller than permitted for the route. Harris was not hurt. The driver of the Toyota was taken to Nyack Hospital with injuries described as non-life-threatening and is expected to recover, according to CBS News.
What makes the video particularly jarring is the context around it. Several commenters on the original footage said another tractor-trailer had clipped an overpass in the same area shortly before this crash, sending debris toward parked cars on the shoulder. That may help explain why so many drivers had pulled over in the first place. If those accounts are accurate, people who stopped to avoid one incident wound up beside the path of another. It is the sort of sequence that strains belief, until you remember how ordinary bridge strikes have become on New York roadways.
First responders shut down two lanes while crews cleared the wreckage. All lanes had reopened by 4 p.m., and the Thruway Authority reported only minor damage to the bridge. That is a small mercy, especially since this is not the first time that particular overpass has been hit by a truck.
Bridge strikes are far more common than many motorists realize, and the cause is often the same: a vehicle too tall for the road it is on. Clearance signs exist for a reason, but human error and tight logistics often override them. In this case, one observer on the video thread put it bluntly, noting that hauling a container more than 12 feet tall on a flatbed is a rookie mistake. Experience does not change the physics of a low bridge, and a delivery deadline does not exempt anyone from a clearance calculation.
For all the visible violence of the crash, the outcome could have been considerably worse. A fully loaded trailer flipping over at highway speed has the potential to end in fatal injuries. Instead, everyone involved is expected to walk away from this one.
If there is a lesson here, it is that roadside luck runs out eventually. This crew still had some left.
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