Sabtu, 11 Februari 2017

Do bridges make you panic



This New York Times article is about a business that shuttles anxious people across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Here's the description of a typical customer:
Kathleen Busch, who retired from the human resources department of a Baltimore company, said she could cross carefree “when I could wear a bikini.” Her fear began after she was stuck in the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel for hours. (Experts say the fear of bridges and tunnels are sometimes linked.) 
Trying to drive through the tunnel later, “everything went white,” Ms. Busch recalled. “I had a full-blown panic attack,” with racing heart and shortness of breath. “I thought I was going to pass out.” 
In the two years since she and her husband bought a retirement home on the Eastern Shore, she has not tried to drive on the Bay Bridge for fear of causing an accident.
Apparently this isn't the only bridge with services to help the anxious make the crossing:
The five-mile-long Mackinac Bridge in Michigan, one of the world's longest suspension bridges, offers a free drivers' assistance program. In the Florida Keys, enterprising college students have been known to wait at either end of the Seven Mile Bridge to drive tourists.  
But the Bay Bridge, because of its proximity to major cities — 366,000 were expected to cross from Friday to Monday — is apparently the only one busy enough to support commercial drive-over services. (Two other companies, besides Kent Island Express, ferry drivers across the bridge.)

(Photo credit.)


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