The Chesapeake Bay Bridge located in Maryland features a span of 4.3 miles and is not only one of the longest bridges in the United States, but also one of the scariest as well as it has earned the reputation of the “scariest bridge in America”.
The 5-lane bridge is an integral part of the popular US Route 50 as well as Route 301 and was made open to the public in 1952. It’s estimated that around 61,000 people cross the bridge on a daily basis, and some of them are more frightful than others.
Mainly because of the rather impressive length, many people often get scared when they start driving because the end isn’t in sight for quite a while.
One of those people is Carolyn Casey, who talked with Inside Edition about her fear of crossing the bridge.
“What happened was I suffered major a panic attack. My peripheral vision went black. I thought I was going to pass out into oncoming traffic,” she recalls.
Another major factor that plays a part on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge is a chance of rapidly changing weather. It can start with a lot of sunshine at the beginning of the trip, but it can turn very quickly with heavy winds and tons of rainfall. Furthermore, the height can be quite daunting at just under 200 feet at some places.
The bridge had already been closed down three times in the past fifteen years due to extreme weather conditions, and one fatal accident occurred in 2008.
The bridge was later found to have some deterioration issues, which were fixed after the tragic accident. Many also think about disasters throughout history involving bridges, fearing that the Chesapeake Bay Bridge would be next.
Local Alex Robinson has even made a living out of helping people drive their car over the bridge and helped Carolyn cross as well.
His company charges a fee of $25 to take you and your car from one side of the bridge all the way across.
Apparently, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge frightens many people to such as extent that some are willing to pay someone else to drive their own car – at the time of filming, Alex said that Carolyn was her nineteenth client on that day.
Alex says that he has been doing this for over four years and has crossed the bridge at least 10,000 times.
He doesn’t think of his service as just a simple taxi service, as he’d rather call himself a ‘therapist’ to help people cross the bridge, although the bridge itself as a conversation topic isn’t exactly popular with his clients.
Please SHARE this with your friends and family.
