Bridge construction brings out fear in some motorists
Updated 4:19 pm, Thursday, March 28, 2013
If you're scared to drive across the Neches River Bridge because the highway lanes are scrunched together to make reconstruction possible, there's an actual term for that.
It's called gephyrophobia, (pronounced JEFF-i-ro-FO-bee-uh) and it is the specific clinical term for the fear of crossing a bridge.
In a movie called "Hoosiers," in which basketball players from a small high school were getting ready to play in the biggest arena they ever saw, their coach had them measure the height of the goal.
"Same as back home," he said and the kids felt better about it.
The Texas Department of Transportation shifted traffic lanes on the Neches River Bridge, also called the Purple Heart Memorial Bridge, to its westbound lanes.
Each of the four lanes measures 11 and a half feet wide, said Marc Shepherd, transportation department spokesman.
A standard interstate lane is 12 feet wide, so motorists are losing 6 inches, or about the length of a dollar bill. That works out to 3 inches on each side of the lane, Shepherd said.
Still, that right lane on the eastbound side from Orange County into Beaumont puts a car awfully close to the barrier that separates the roadway from a lot of air above a lot of water.
Beaumont psychologist Carmen Kaimann said she treated a patient who had a fear of crossing bridges, which was a problem for him because he had to travel across bridges like the Old and Lost River Bridge toward Houston or the Intracoastal Waterway bridge from High Island to the Bolivar Peninsula.
"He felt very alone," she said. "He got a Blue Tooth phone so he could call his wife when he was driving over the bridges."