The Safeway truck proved not to be so safe. As the truck reached newly opened span of the Bay Bridge, it tried to cover the S shaped stretch at higher than permitted speed limit. Driver’s lack of experience of the new stretch compounded by the higher speed resulted in truck being crashed. Only one lane was accessible by the drivers on the bridge just near the Yerba Buena Island. The truck was carrying some 40,000 tons of grocery material that was meant to be supplied on the Safeway outlets in San Francisco and Pacifica. The grocery items like soda, water, bread, frozen items were spilled on the bridge. At about 4:47 p.m. CHP was able to clear the second lane for the traffic but the jam had resulted in vehicles travelling at just crawling speed and there was a miles long line of vehicles behind. In the line of the vehicles behind the crash scene was another Safeway truck that was sent to collect the spilled goods. Traffic lag resulted in that truck being late at the scene also.
CHP was able to clear the bridge for traffic at about 8:14 p.m. It is certain that the driver of the safeway truck Manuel E. Garcia Jara had ignored the speed warning and was driving at a speed of 55 mph at the time of the crash.
The S curve on bridge is posing real time difficulties for drivers as the accident rate at the particular stretch is much higher than usual. CHP officials are of the view that the situation would be normalized once the drivers get used to the newly opened stretch.
Bay Bridge Accident
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