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Truckers may see cowbells make a comeback in Mass.
Musicians play them. Ski fans bang them. Farmers tie them to heifers.
Now, state officials may use cowbells to help solve a curiously persistent transportation problem: trucks that crash into the low Storrow Drive and Memorial Drive bridges despite the abundant signs warning them away.
Frustrated that truckers are blowing right by the signs, the Department of Conservation and Recreation says it may revive a homegrown network of cowbells to give the drivers a musical wake-up call.
The system was first installed in the 1980s when the state chained cowbells - no fancier than the kind used by farmers - to rubber flaps that said "Cars Only" and hung them from "Low Clearance" signs along the busy roads. Truckers who did not heed the warnings hit the flaps and heard the cowbells clang in enough time to stop before they rammed overpasses.
Now, state officials may use cowbells to help solve a curiously persistent transportation problem: trucks that crash into the low Storrow Drive and Memorial Drive bridges despite the abundant signs warning them away.
Frustrated that truckers are blowing right by the signs, the Department of Conservation and Recreation says it may revive a homegrown network of cowbells to give the drivers a musical wake-up call.
The system was first installed in the 1980s when the state chained cowbells - no fancier than the kind used by farmers - to rubber flaps that said "Cars Only" and hung them from "Low Clearance" signs along the busy roads. Truckers who did not heed the warnings hit the flaps and heard the cowbells clang in enough time to stop before they rammed overpasses.