DISTRACTIONS MAY HAVE CAUSED GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE CRASH

This is the truck that will move & place the barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge

This is the truck that will move & place the barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge

The new moveable barrier that is supposed to prevent serious collisions on the Golden Gate Bridge is now in place, but it may be responsible for a string of minor accidents.

The new moveable median barrier that is supposed to prevent serious collisions on the Golden Gate Bridge is now in place, but it may be responsible for a string of minor accidents that occurred Monday morning.

Traffic has been flowing smoothly, for the most part, since the barrier’s installation was completed Sunday night.

However, there have been no fewer than three minor incidents on the bridge in which distracted drivers may be to blame.

The traffic incidents happened early Monday morning. They happened on either side of the bridge and bridge authorities and CHP are warning drivers to pay attention because there are some changes and it’s going to take a while before commuters get used to those changes.

On this first full day of the commute after the Golden Gate Bridge re-opened, some drivers got an up close and personal look at the brand new zipper truck in action.

“It’s the first time and people haven’t seen the machine move and haven’t seen the wall move,” Golden Gate Bridge Patrol Capt. Lisa Locati said.

After plenty of training inside the new piece of equipment before this weekend and a full day of test drives by the crew Sunday, this first day out in open traffic was a spectacle.

But bridge authorities are hoping this will soon become routine and they’re hoping some of the other changes will also be less of a distraction, like the new center barrier.

During the morning commute, there was a multi-vehicle crash involving five cars right along the barrier.

One of the drivers in the crash says someone might have been transfixed by the new median. “I heard that we kind of lost a couple inches of the lane, so maybe people were just distracted or kind of looking and not paying attention,” Darlyn Delao said.

According to the CHP, none of the vehicles even touched the barrier.

But as the day wore on, we noticed lots of drivers shied away from the center lanes.

Kelly Cash is showing a friend around the Bay Area, so he left his motorcycle home. In his truck, he avoided the center lane. “I had a little wariness about it occasionally, not so much in a motorcycle cause I can move to the right side of that lane, but in my truck it could be a little tight,” Cash said.

The center lanes are now only 9.5-feet wide because the barrier takes up six inches of either lane, according to Caltrans. That’s one of the narrowest of any highway in the whole state. That’s because the Golden Gate Bridge was originally designed to have just four lanes.

So drivers will simply have to slow down and be careful. “Slow down. Start slowing down at the Waldo Grade, ready yourself for a new merge process,” Locati said.

There were two other traffic incidents, both at the toll plaza. The first accident involved a Range Rover which slammed into one of the brand new impact absorbers, mangling the vehicle and damaging the newly installed piece of equipment.

The second accident involved a big-rig that got snagged in toll chute three when it is supposed to only use chutes one or two.

The barrier system consists of approximately 13,000 feet of 32-inch-tall and 1-foot-wide concrete blocks. It’s been in place since 9:30 p.m. Sunday. The installation was completed Saturday evening and the zipper car crews finished their training more than six hours early.

Commuters ABC7 News spoke with didn’t seem to mind the tighter squeeze. “Driving over this morning, I was in the inside lane next to the new barrier and it didn’t seem to be that much narrower.”

“It looked nice. The barrier didn’t seem to take up any more space. I stayed out of that lane,” Michael Dalton said.

“I didn’t notice it. I guess without the cones there it looked kind of more spacious to me in a way,” Ray Creager said.