When a bridge collapses, who gets blamed? The civil engineers, mechanical engineers, materials engineers, etc?

Answer 1

They have a big investigation, and blame no one or evryone. The lawyers will blame whoever has the biggest bank account.

Answer 2

Everybody tries to blame everybody else. I'm not a civil engineer; I'm an ex-meteorologist. Six months after I left a job, luckily for me, a pilot flew a plane into the fire station at the airport where I'd been working, killing 45 people. It was pilot error; the idiot had tried to land in a thunderstorm, instead of diverting, but they tried to blame the forecasters at our airport and the one he'd taken off from, air traffic controllers, the manufacturers, the engineers who'd serviced the plane and, afterwards, three different fire crews who were slow to arrive at the scene.

Answer 3

Usually the construction company which contracts to build the bridge.

Sometimes the designing engineers are blamed. Google "galloping gertie" for a particular case of that. They neglected to take into account the aerodynamics of the bridge.

Answer 4

A bridge collapsed north of DC back in 1989 and on the Baltimore Beltway in 1999.

In both cases, the contractor was sued. I believe some people served jail time for negligence as well.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/daily/june99/collapse0609.htm
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/legsregs/directives/techadvs/t514024.htm

Answer 5

Well, the first question is WHY did it collapse? This answer determines who gets blamed.

Answer 6

Usually blame ends up being placed on the party with the deepest pockets.

Answer 7

It depends on the cause - could be a structural defect, could be a materials issue.

Answer 8

whoever broke it???? duh!