Catherine Martz can still hear the sound that made her and her husband jolt while they drove over the Île-aux-Tourtes bridge in Vaudreuil last week.
She says while crossing the bridge with their two-month-old son, something hit their car that was strong enough to shatter the driver’s side window.
“In the moment, you don’t realize what’s happening,” said Martz. “Then I just look at my husband and I see the window crumbling down but we’re still moving and I’m like, ‘Are you OK?'”
Thankfully, no one was injured.
The mother of two says they took the next exit and pulled into Saint-Anne-de-Bellevue’s fire station, where first responders attended to the couple and tried to help them figure out what exactly hit their car.
They came up empty-handed.
Martz says after the ordeal, she called their insurance company and her husband called the Sûreté du Quebec.
“Unfortunately we didn’t get a really good answer,” said Martz. “They said they couldn’t do anything about it really, saying it was a road hazard, that it’s kind of our choice to drive through construction and these things can happen.”
Martz says the incident was the second time something hit her car while driving over the bridge in the last month.
She decided to share her experience on social media.
Her post received responses from others who say they have also experienced or witnessed incidences on the bridge.
Transports Québec says repair work on the bridge, including slab demolition work, has been underway for several weeks, but it has numerous protective measures in place to prevent debris from going onto the road.
“We have the work zone, the protective wall, the buffer zone and then the lanes,” said Transports Québec spokesperson Sarah Bensadoun.
They have not received any complaints, from their end or from police, but she adds that their on-site team has now been advised.
“They will be extra careful to make sure to look onto the road, make sure that there are no debris that could cause this type of situation, because of course, this is extremely unfortunate and we want to make sure people feel safe while driving on our infrastructures,” she said.
According to Quebec’s Automobile Insurance Board (SAAQ), there were 104 collisions reported in 2022 involving a vehicle and a temporary object in a construction zone.
There were also 25 collisions involving a vehicle and an object that was detached from another vehicle or structure, also in a construction zone.
Bensadoun says people can file complaints about any of its infrastructures via the Quebec 511 website.
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