28-year-old Patrick Wissink was seriously injured last Friday evening after he fell from De Prinsenbrug in Haarlem. The news hit Wesley Fontijn like a bomb. He lost his mother in 2015 on the Den Uyl bridge in Zaandam.
News of this accident reached Wesley on Monday after someone tagged him in the news report. ”It is terrible news and aeverything comes up again,” says Fontin. He is in complete shock, but he is not surprised that this can still happen. ”The bridges should have been safe long ago, but municipalities have to allocate money for this.” To draw attention to the insecurity of bridges, he tells his story.
Accident 2015
The Zaanse Marijke Fontijn (57) got on her bike on February 6, 2015 to go to the De Slag swimming pool. There she swam weekly and dBefore that she cycled the same route across the Den every week Uyl bridge. An ordinary bike ride with a dramatic ending. Marijke was already cycling on the bridge when she heard the signal to raise the bridge. She stopped, tried to go back but couldn’t make it to get to the main part. They tried to cling to the railing, but fell ndown on a concrete upright. Mary died on the spot.
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Research
Wesley was left with questions after his mother’s accident. How can this happen? And how are we going to prevent this in the future? For years he has researched the safety of bridges in the Zaan region. He had an important goal in mind: to prevent recurrence. He wrote down his findings in a report in which he also clearly formulated safety advice. He submitted this report to the municipality of Zaanstad.
“The bridges should have been safe a long time ago, but municipalities have to allocate money for this”
In vain because in 2018 an elderly couple fell from the Prince Bernahard Bridge in Zaandam. Reason for Wesley to once again conduct research into the safety of bridges. He drew up a new report in the hope that the outcome of this investigation would be taken seriously and that a recurrence would actually be prevented. In that last report he released in 2019 he wrote: We cannot turn back time, but by taking the right measures we can take a head start on a secure future.
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Safety measures bridges
It incident of Patrick Wissink opens old wounds. Still, Wesley is not surprised. “To make the bridges safer, municipalities have to allocate money and that is not happening.” Welsey has several ideas for making bridges safer. “There should at least be detection systems for pedestrians, cyclists and cars, so that bridge operators receive a signal if something is on the movable part.” But there is much more wrong with bridge safety states Wesley. ”The fact that there are no emergency buttons and there is no voice connection, that’s just part of a machine.” He himself works as a fault engineer with trains. “Everything is enforced on a train, it can’t run if a door doesn’t close or if someone is in between.”
”The fact that there are no emergency buttons and there is no voice connection. That’s just part of a machine”
Patrick Wisink
After hearing the news from 28-year-old Patrick Wissink, everything came back to Fontijn. He sympathizes with the family of the victim who fell from the bridge in Haarlem last Friday night when the bridge opened. “This accident should certainly not have happened again in 2022,” said Wesley Fontijn.
NH News made a report about Marijke Fontijn in 2015:
Straight from North Holland: Marijke Fontijn – NH News
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