AI GPS to Stop Truck Bridge Strikes (and Delays)

Pennsylvania recorded 600+ bridge strikes between 2013 and 2023. New York saw 350 in 2024 alone. That’s not a quirky local problem—it’s a repeatable failure mode in freight routing that turns into blocked lanes, damaged infrastructure, missed appointments, and expensive claims.

Most companies still treat low-clearance crashes as “driver error.” I don’t. The pattern is too consistent. When an incident happens hundreds of times a year in the same corridors, you’re looking at a systems problem: incomplete clearance data, passenger-car GPS logic, inconsistent signage, and dispatch processes that don’t reliably match vehicle height to safe routes.

That’s why the newly introduced Bridges Not Bumpers Act of 2025 matters for anyone building or buying tech in trucking. Not because a bill magically fixes bridges—but because it pushes the industry toward something logistics has needed for years: shared, standardized clearance intelligence that modern routing (including AI) can actually use.

The real cause of truck-bridge strikes isn’t “bad driving”

Truck-bridge strikes happen when three things collide: missing data, mismatched navigation, and time pressure.

Low-clearance bridges are common in older metro areas, rail corridors, and industrial zones. But the bigger issue is that many routing tools still behave like this:

• They assume a “normal” vehicle, not a 13’6” trailer—or a taller specialized load.
• They don’t have reliable, current clearance attributes for every overpass, tunnel, or detour.
• They route around congestion in ways that push trucks onto roads never meant for them.

The FreightWaves report on the Bridges Not Bumpers Act points directly at inaccurate GPS systems for commercial vehicles as an exacerbating factor. That’s the right diagnosis. A driver can do everything “right” and still get set up to fail by a route suggestion that doesn’t respect clearance.

Here’s what it looks like operationally:

1. A load gets tendered late.
2. Dispatch selects a route that’s “fastest” in a consumer map.
3. The driver follows turn-by-turn guidance through a local shortcut.
4. A low bridge appears after a bend, under bad lighting, or with confusing signage.
5. Brakes, panic, impact—or a stuck truck that blocks the road for hours.

For shippers and 3PLs, this becomes a service failure. For carriers, it’s claims, CSA exposure, downtime, and insurance pressure. For cities and rail owners, it’s repair cost and economic disruption.

What the Bridges Not Bumpers Act of 2025 actually changes

The bill’s most practical contribution is not enforcement—it’s data plumbing.

The proposed legislation directs the Transportation Secretary to:

• Establish a Bridge Clearance Strike Working Group to improve public-private information sharing (clearances, truck routes, GPS tool info) and to recommend clearer labeling of truck rental vehicles with height/weight.
• Create a National Clearinghouse for Bridge and Tunnel Clearance Strikes to collect data and disseminate best practices.
• Create a grant program for research that uses the clearinghouse to identify candidate locations for infrastructure improvements and evaluate countermeasures.

If you work in fleet tech, telematics, TMS routing, or last-mile visibility, that clearinghouse concept is the big deal.

A national clearinghouse can standardize answers to questions that routing engines need every day:

• Where are the high-risk low-clearance assets?
• What’s the verified clearance (not a rumor from a forum post)?
• How often do incidents occur, and under what conditions?
• Are there seasonal patterns (snowpack, construction detours, holiday congestion)?

The bill is also supported by major trucking and railroad organizations—important because railroads often own and maintain bridges that trucks can strike. Multi-stakeholder support increases the odds that the data-sharing mechanisms become real, not just aspirational.

Where AI fits: from “route optimization” to “route safety assurance”

AI in transportation & logistics has spent years optimizing cost, ETA, and utilization. Bridge strikes force a shift to a different standard: route safety assurance.

A useful way to frame it:

• Traditional routing asks: “What’s the fastest path?”
• Commercial routing asks: “What’s the legal path for trucks?”
• Safety-assured routing asks: “What’s the safest path for this vehicle, right now, with this clearance and this detour risk?”

AI helps when the environment is messy—construction, detours, inconsistent signage, changing restrictions—because it can continuously evaluate risk and adapt.

AI use case #1: Clearance-aware routing that learns from near misses

The highest ROI AI isn’t “black box routing.” It’s models that combine deterministic rules (height limits are non-negotiable) with probabilistic risk scoring.

A practical AI workflow looks like this:

• Ingest bridge/tunnel clearance data (from DOTs, rail owners, municipalities, the new clearinghouse, and internal incident logs).
• Normalize it into a single schema (asset ID, verified clearance, confidence score, last verified date).
• Fuse it with road network attributes and live events (closures, detours, work zones).
• Produce routes that satisfy hard constraints (height/weight) and minimize soft risks (tight turns, school zones, known confusion points).

Near-miss data matters. If telematics shows repeated hard braking events or abrupt reroutes near a specific overpass, that location should be flagged—even if a strike hasn’t happened yet.

AI use case #2: “Vehicle height as a first-class data field”

Most bridge strikes come down to one missing field: actual vehicle height at dispatch time.

AI can’t prevent an impact if the system doesn’t know whether the truck is 12’6”, 13’6”, 14’0”, or taller due to:

• suspension settings
• tire size changes
• load configuration
• rental equipment variability

The best fleets treat height like they treat HOS: required, validated, and visible.

How AI supports this:

• Computer vision at yard gates to estimate trailer height and detect anomalies.
• Automated cross-checks between equipment master data and driver-entered height.
• Prompts that force resolution when data conflicts (example: “Trailer type suggests 13’6” but driver entered 14’0”. Confirm before route is released.”)

AI use case #3: Real-time rerouting when detours create hidden clearance risk

Holiday season (like mid-December right now) is peak stress: tighter appointment windows, more congestion, more construction “wrap-up,” and more unfamiliar substitute drivers. Detours become common—and detours are where clearance logic breaks.

A modern AI-enabled navigation layer should:

• Detect when a driver deviates.
• Recompute a clearance-safe route instantly.
• Warn early when the next feasible turn-around point is still ahead.

The key is timing. A warning 200 feet before a bridge is theater. A warning 2 miles before, with a safe alternate, changes outcomes.

What to do now: a practical playbook for carriers and 3PLs

You don’t need to wait for federal action to reduce risk. The fleets that cut incidents treat bridge strikes like any other preventable loss: measure it, model it, and operationalize prevention.

Step 1: Build a “clearance truth” process (even if it’s small)

Start with a minimal internal dataset:

• Top 50 lanes where you operate
• Known low-clearance assets along those lanes
• Your equipment height list by tractor/trailer type
• A simple “verified vs. unverified” flag

This is unglamorous work. It pays back fast.

Step 2: Put clearance checks into dispatch, not just the cab

Bridge-strike prevention fails when it’s pushed entirely onto drivers.

Operational controls that work:

• A dispatch rule: no route released without a declared vehicle height.
• TMS validation: block routes that cross low-clearance assets below threshold.
• Standard operating procedure for rentals: photo of height marking + entered height.

Step 3: Use telematics and incident data to identify “strike magnets”

Even without a national clearinghouse, you already have signals:

• harsh braking clusters
• repeated manual reroutes in the same area
• stop duration spikes near specific overpasses
• driver notes and exception comments

Turn those into a weekly review. Map them. Prioritize fixes.

Step 4: Choose AI tools that show their work

If a vendor says “our AI optimizes routes,” ask:

• Does it support hard constraints for height/weight?
• Where does clearance data come from, and how often is it refreshed?
• Can we see why a route was rejected?
• Does it learn from our internal incidents and near misses?

If you can’t audit the decision, you can’t defend it after a crash.

Common questions teams ask (and the straight answers)

“Can AI replace truck-specific GPS?”

AI should sit under truck navigation as a risk engine and above the TMS as a route policy layer. Replacing the in-cab experience isn’t required to get value quickly.

“Is the problem mostly signage?”

Signage helps, but it’s not scalable prevention. Routing that avoids the hazard is more reliable than hoping every driver reads the right sign at the right moment.

“Won’t better data take years?”

Some of it will. But a carrier can reduce exposure in weeks by enforcing vehicle height capture, blocking unsafe routes, and learning from telematics clusters.

The bigger trend in AI in Transportation & Logistics

The Bridges Not Bumpers Act is a reminder that logistics AI isn’t only about efficiency—it’s about preventing predictable disruption.

Bridge strikes are a perfect test case because the impact is measurable:

• fewer service failures
• fewer insurance claims
• fewer out-of-route miles from emergency detours
• less downtime and recovery cost
• less community disruption and negative press

As clearance data becomes more standardized (especially if a national clearinghouse takes hold), the winners won’t be the companies with the fanciest dashboards. They’ll be the ones that turn shared data into dispatch decisions that prevent the next incident.

If you’re responsible for safety, routing, or fleet technology in 2026 planning, this is a smart place to focus: clearance-aware AI routing, vehicle data integrity, and real-time exception handling.

What would change in your operation if every route came with a simple guarantee: no low-clearance surprises?