The battle to stop bridge strikes across the country

For rail passengers, it can be galling to hear or read that your train has been delayed, putting your journey, your day, back into a land of uncertainty.

That is the obvious consequence when a vehicle, especially a lorry, hits a bridge carrying the service in question. It can lead to days of disruption, gridlocked roads – and also cost millions of pounds to fix.

Bridge strikes, as Network Rail calls them, have been factor for decades and, recently, one caused major disruption in Warwickshire, delaying trains across the country while engineers checked the structure was safe.

But why do they keep happening?

Between April 2024 and March 2025 there were 1,666 reported bridge strikes across the country’s rail network, according to Network Rail, with crashes costing the operator about £23m a year in repairs.

For Mike Craney, who has spent more than two decades driving lorries, such strikes are frustrating because, he believes, they should easily be avoided.

The experienced driver, from Birmingham, who now lives in Cannock, Staffordshire, still remembers the moment, shortly after passing his test, when he almost became a statistic himself.