How one little boat (and me) held up miles of London traffic at Tower Bridge
3,460,914
Published 2021-08-09
Produced by: Cambria Bailey-Jones
Edited by: Guy Larsen
Camera: Jamie MacLeod
2nd Unit Camera: Jimmy Blake
Drone Director: Matthew Bateman
Drone Operators: Ian Hunter, Phil Conrad
A Penny4 Production: www.penny4.co.uk/
Filmed safely: www.tomscott.com/safe/
REFERENCES:
Corporation of London (Tower Bridge) Act 1885, vlex.co.uk/vid/corporation-of-london-tower-8081084…
Hansard debate on Tower Bridge 1970, hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1960-01-27/debates/9…
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All Comments (21)
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It's very rare that drones are allowed close to Tower Bridge, and also very rare that anyone outside the Tower Bridge organisation gets to push the buttons — so thank you very much to everyone involved in making this video happen!
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When Tom, started to raise the bridge even just watching I could feel the weight of what a simple task means. Raising and lowering a bridge sounds simple, but ensuring safety measures are completed and knowing the impact it has must get the nerves tingling just a bit.
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Holding up the U.S. President’s motorcade by raising Tower Bridge sounds like part of a terrorist kidnapping plot straight out of a movie.
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I love what the tower operator says at the end "Done this hundreds of times, and I still get a kick out of it" Great job Tom
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Tom: You ever tempted to just raise it when slow walkers are on it? Bridge Operator: The law REQUIRES I answer no
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I feel like this would be a good plot device in a heist movie. Hire a tall boat and block the target by raising the bridge.
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Tower Bridge is currently stuck open. I refuse to believe this a coincidence and cannot possibly comment on the allegations that Tom is secretly Lord Commander of Bridges and Yeoman of London Traffic.
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"so what do you do for a living?" "I drive a bridge." "You drive across a bridge?" "No, I drive the bridge."
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I absolutely love the interface design: You literally hit the buttons left to right in order. Just a really simple user design.
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love that this was uploaded as tower bridge is currently stuck
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Tom’s timing is so fortunate. The last time the bridge was stuck was a year ago. Now it’s very likely that his video will gain more traffic as people look up the bridge and how it works due to this incident.
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Tom: "Right, how do we get this back down?" International news: "London’s Tower Bridge stuck open after technical failure, causing traffic disruptions"
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3:50 I wish more people understood that this applies to many fields, so many think that some jobs are easy like this or even a pilot, then they say something like "you get paid 50k to press buttons all year?! Sign me up!" When in reality the job is 100x more complicated and the reason why you get paid 50k is because you have years of experience that will make sure you can fix stuff when things go wrong.
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I was half hoping Tom somehow parked a small boat under the bridge while trying to recording a video and somehow managed to hold up traffic
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"Right, how do we get this back down?" That's what half of London is asking right now
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I used to be a London tour guide. When we did coach or bus tours it was considered extremely lucky to be caught as the bridge was being raised, the tourists love it. we would take the tourists out of the bus onto the pavement to take photos (very naughty I know) but you were almost guaranteed a tip when you got to the Tower of London.
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I love how there is a joystick and not up and down buttons. Also how they determine 45 degrees with the iron works is awesome.
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At least Tom showed the bridge going back down. Otherwise this would be quite the funny story of how Tom unintentionally broke Tower Bridge.
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Tom is living all of our childhood dreams. Pressing big buttons to lift drawbridges, climbing wind turbines, filming volcanoes, making fireworks...
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I'm from St. Petersburg and we have 12 drawn bridges in the city, it's a big tourist attraction too. But they are drawn according to a schedule and always at night (for most of the night though, with short breaks), so the boats and ships just have to wait until that time if they can't fit under the closed bridge during the day and the cars have to wait until closing gaps at night. It also only happens during summer, because, well, in the winter Neva is frozen.
