The National Transportation Safety Board said a proper risk assessment by the state of Maryland may have avoided the deadly Key Bridge collapse in 2024, and the agency warned that dozens of other bridges are at similar risk throughout the United States.
The warning comes as part of the NTSB’s ongoing investigation into the March 2024 allision of the containership Dali with the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, which killed six road workers.
In a new report, the NTSB said it conducted a vulnerability assessment of the Key Bridge and found that the risk level was almost 30 times greater than the acceptable threshold for bridges considered essential to the national highway network.
“Had the Maryland Transportation Authority (MDTA) conducted such an assessment based on recent vessel traffic, they would have been aware of this elevated risk,” the NTSB said in the report.